to handle the managerial reins herself upon occasions. Pat beamed all over his round ruddy face.
“Miss Madge, you weren’t to the park yesterday and we lost without our pretty mascot. We shure needed you. Denver’s playin’ at a fast clip.”
“I’m coming out today,” replied Miss Ellston, thoughtfully. “Pat, what’s a knocker?”
“Now, Miss Madge, are you askin’ me that after I’ve been coachin’ you in baseball for years?” questioned Pat, in distress.
“I know what a knocker is, as everybody else does. But I want to know the real meaning, the inside-ball of it, to use your favorite saying.”
Studying her grave face with shrewd eyes Donahue slowly lost his smile.
“The inside-ball of it, eh? Come, let’s sit over here a bit—the sun’s shure warm today.… Miss Madge, a knocker is the strangest man known in the game, the hardest to deal with and what every baseball manager hates most.”
Donahue told her that he believed the term “knocker” came originally from baseball; that in general it typified the player who strengthened his own standing by belittling the ability of his team-mates, and by enlarging upon his own superior qualities. But there were many phases of this peculiar type. Some players were natural born knockers; others acquired the name in their later years in the game when younger men threatened to win their places. Some of the best players ever produced by baseball had the habit in its most violent form. There were players of ridiculously poor ability who held their jobs on the strength of this one trait. It was a mystery how they misled magnates and managers alike; how for months they held their places, weakening a team, often keeping a good team down in the race; all from sheer bold suggestion of their own worth and other players’ worthlessness. Strangest of all was the knockers’ power to disorganize; to engender a bad spirit between management and team and among the players. The team which was without one of the parasites of the game generally stood well up in the race for the pennant, though there had been championship teams noted for great knockers as well as great players.
“It’s shure strange, Miss Madge,” said Pat in conclusion, shaking his gray head. “I’ve played hundreds of knockers, and released them, too. Knockers always get it in the end, but they go on foolin’ me and workin’ me just the same as if I was a youngster with my first team. They’re part and parcel of the game.”
“Do you like these men off the field—outside of baseball, I mean?”
“No, I shure don’t, and I never seen one yet that wasn’t the same off the field as he was on.”
“Thank you, Pat. I think I understand now. And—oh, yes, there’s another thing I want to ask you. What’s the matter with Billie Sheldon? Uncle George said he was falling off in his game. Then I’ve read the papers. Billie started out well in the spring.”
“Didn’t he? I was sure thinkin’ I had a find in Billie. Well, he’s lost his nerve. He’s in a bad slump. It’s worried me for days. I’m goin’ to release Billie. The team needs a shake-up. That’s where Billie gets the worst of it, for he’s really the makin’ of a star; but he’s slumped, and now knockin’ has made him let down. There, Miss Madge, that’s an example of what I’ve just been tellin’ you. And you can see that a manager has his troubles. These hulkin’ athletes are a lot of spoiled babies and I often get sick of my job.”
That afternoon Miss Ellston was in a brown study all the way out to the baseball park. She arrived rather earlier than usual to find the grand-stand empty. The Denver team had just come upon the field, and the Kansas City players were practising batting at the left of the diamond. Madge walked down the aisle of the grand stand and out along the reporters’ boxes. She asked one of the youngsters on the field to tell Mr. Sheldon that she would like to speak with him a moment.
Billie eagerly hurried from the players’ bench with a look of surprise and expectancy on his sun-tanned face. Madge experienced for the first time a sudden sense of shyness at his coming. His lithe form and his nimble step somehow gave her a pleasure that seemed old yet was new. When he neared her, and, lifting his cap, spoke her name, the shade of gloom in his eyes and lines of trouble on his face dispelled her confusion.
“Billie, Pat tells me he’s given you ten days’ notice,” she said.
“It’s true.”
“What’s wrong with you, Billie?”
“Oh, I’ve struck a bad streak—can’t hit or throw.”
“Are you a quitter?”
“No, I’m not,” he answered quickly, flushing a dark red.
“You started off this spring with a rush. You played brilliantly and for a while led the team in batting. Uncle George thought so well of you. Then came this spell of bad form. But, Billie, it’s only a slump; you can brace.”
“I don’t know,” he replied, despondently. “Awhile back I got my mind off the game. Then—people who don’t like me have taken advantage of my slump to—”
“To knock,” interrupted Miss Ellston.
“I’m not saying that,” he said, looking away from her.
“But I’m saying it. See here, Billie Sheldon, my uncle owns this team and Pat Donahue is manager. I think they both like me a little. Now I don’t want to see you lose your place. Perhaps—”
“Madge, that’s fine of you—but I think—I guess it’d be best for me to leave Kansas City.”
“Why?”
“You know,” he said huskily. “I’ve lost my head—I’m in love—I can’t think of baseball—I’m crazy about you.”
Miss Ellston’s sweet face grew rosy, clear to the tips of her ears.
“Billie Sheldon,” she replied, spiritedly. “You’re talking nonsense. Even if you were were that way, it’d be no reason to play poor ball. Don’t throw the game, as Pat would say. Make a brace! Get up on your toes! Tear things! Rip the boards off the fence! Don’t quit!”
She exhausted her vocabulary of baseball language if not her enthusiasm, and paused in blushing confusion.
“Madge!”
“Will you brace up?”
“Will I—will I!” he exclaimed, breathlessly.
Madge murmured a hurried good-bye and, turning away, went up the stairs. Her uncle’s private box was upon the top of the grand stand and she reached it in a somewhat bewildered state of mind. She had a confused sense of having appeared to encourage Billie, and did not know whether she felt happy or guilty. The flame in his eyes had warmed all her blood. Then, as she glanced over the railing to see the powerful Burns Carroll, there rose in her breast a panic at strange variance with her other feelings.
Many times had Madge Ellston viewed the field and stands and the outlying country from this high vantage point; but never with the same mingling emotions, nor had the sunshine ever been so golden, the woods and meadows so green, the diamond so smooth and velvety, the whole scene so gaily bright.
Denver had always been a good drawing card, and having won the first game of the present
