came to the bat and made fun of the grim-jawed catcher, who refused to answer.
After the game Nellie exploded.
“Th’ damn hound!” he roared. “Here I am, tied and bound and pledged not to hit ’im and he goes out there and gets my goat! I’ll show him—I’ll show him! I tell you, I’ll prove that guy the biggest four-flush that ever lived!”
That was the second time he threatened to prove Davis a four-flush and I commenced to wonder just what he meant.
The game next day was one of those slugging, seesaw contests which rouse the fans to a frenzy. There wasn’t standing room in the park and it was just our luck that ground rules were in effect. I’ll bet the Panther management made enough to finance a war that year.
* * * *
They knocked me out of the box in the third inning and we slammed their pitcher all over the lot in the fifth.
The eighth inning ended with the Reds one run behind—the score being six to five in our favor. One run would tie the game for them, and two would probably win, as they had Rudy Beiger in the box, and he was pitching air-tight ball at that time.
The first man up went out, and then the Wild Man came to the bat. While he was waiting he turned to Nellie.
“You been standin’ a heap from me lately,” he said evilly. “I reckon I must have hammered some respect into that ivory skull of yours that day we fought.”
Nellie’s jaw grew mighty firm and he turned away. Then Davis laughed derisively.
“Yellow!” he said.
Nellie faced him squarely. “You four-flush!” he said.
And then he said something else—I couldn’t catch just what it was, but Davis half way staggered back and then looked as though he was going to hit Nelligan. And Nelligan just smiled and repeated the thing, whatever it was.
Sandy thought it must be something about the girl we thought was mixed up in the affair, but I do know that I never saw a man show such terrible anger as Davis showed that minute. He was the wild man then, all right, all right.
And I knew, just as well as I knew my name, that if Davis got the chance he was going to spike Nellie—and spike him hard!
The crowd was wild by this time. Our two rivals had lost that day, as the left field scoreboard showed, and a victory meant a two-game lead for us over the next club.
We’d been ahead and then they’d wrested the lead from us, and then we’d gone ahead again. There was one out now—two more and we had the game without playing our half of the ninth.
The first one sizzled across the outside corner of the pan, but I reckon Davis was too shaky mad to see it, and he didn’t wake up until the umpire called it a strike and the crowd yelled with glee.
The next one was tempting bait—a fast one just a little more than shoulder high, but Davis had a good eye and let it pass. One strike and one ball.
The next was a spitter, also wide of the platter, and a second ball was called. The next one drifted over—
Davis’s bat cracked against it. There was something sinister in that crack of bat and ball.
The ball shot between center and left, and when it was returned Davis was on second!
The crowd was silent now, deathly silent. The spectators knew better than to rattle their own pitcher.
Scrappy Connor trotted down to the third base coaching box. Davis, perhaps the best base-runner on the league, on second. Things didn’t look any too bright for us.
I wondered what would happen if Davis got a fair chance to come home. I saw him squinting at Nelligan, and I knew that he was more anxious to get his spikes into Nellie’s shins than to score that run. As for Nellie, he was grim-visaged and cold—plain cold mad.
On the second ball pitched Davis streaked for third. Nellie slammed the ball to Masterson on a line—and Masterson fumbled it as Davis’s shiny spikes zipped past him. The crowd groaned again.
Brodie was at bat. He waited until two strikes and one ball had been called and leaned up against the next one. At the crack of bat and ball Davis pelted for home.
The sphere sizzled nastily along the ground between third and short. Freddy Lewis leaped wildly for it, and the ball stuck in his bare hand. Without waiting to straighten up he did what only Freddy Lewis can do—lined the ball like a bullet straight into Nelligan’s waiting mitt.
“Slide!”
It was a roar of command from the bench of the Reds. And you can bet your life that Davis needed no such instructions. His eyes were focused viciously on Nelligan’s calmly waiting, stocky body.
Fifteen feet from Nelligan he catapulted into the air and crashed, spikes first, straight toward the catcher. It was the most cold-blooded attempt at spiking I have ever witnessed.
It was up to Nelligan. In that fraction of a second I figured it out that Nellie could either be spiked and save the game for the Panthers, or that he could jump to safety. Then—
Nelligan leaped aside and Davis slipped past him in a cloud of dust!
But as he struck the ground he commenced to writhe. Like a panther, Nellie was on him, jamming the ball with terrific force into his ribs. I saw the arm of the umpire wave.
“Out!” he yelled.
Bedlam broke loose.
I couldn’t understand. But after the game Nelligan explained.
“I know he was more anxious to spike me than to score the run,” the little catcher told us, “and I’ve always said I’d prove him a four-flush. So I stood three feet to the right of the plate to receive Lewis’s throw. Just as I expected, he slid straight at me—never even looking to see if I was at the plate. I let him slide by. Then I touched him out.”
THE TRUMP CARD, by Octavus Roy Cohen
All-players are born, not made. They’re like opera-singers and traveling salesmen and politicians: the temperament has got to be there when nursy first tells papa that it’s a boy, and mother and child are doing very well. Of course there are a bunch of men who attain more or less fame on the diamond, but that’s because there are a certain number of places in the big leagues that have to be filled by some one. But as to real, honest-to-goodness, dyed-in-the-wool, inspirational, instinctive ball-players—they come along about once in a decade.
Ty Cobb—you know the fellow—well, he’s one of ’em. Charlie Zimmer is another.
Charlie was bought by the Colts when they needed a crackerjack outfielder worse than an aviator with two busted planes and a balky motor needs a soft place to land. He was discovered by a scout in some bush league of the Middle West, clouting at an average close to .500, fielding one error short of perfect, and as wise to the inner workings of the game as a man can be.
He joined the Colts during their series with the Pheasants. He sat unassumingly and unconcernedly on the bench, acknowledged his introductions to the other players calmly and without
