CHAPTER XIV
"Technicalities" on the Job
The Bears were going home holding grimly to their claim upon first place in the league race. With but seven games remaining to be played all were against clubs already beaten, and five of the seven were against clubs considerably weaker in every department. Two games were to be played off the home grounds.
The statisticians were busy calculating that the Bears had a decided advantage in the race, yet they were not happy in the homecoming. The ride home was only a few hours long, and they had caught the train immediately after the sensational finish of the final game with the Travelers in order to reach home and get settled by midnight.
Swanson and McCarthy sat together as the train pulled out, talking in low tones.
"I think Clancy is onto him," said Swanson. "Just sit tight. It isn't our move yet. The Boss acted queerly on the bench to-day and has been watching Williams all the time, while pretending not to. I'm going to mingle and see if any of the other fellows are wise to him."
Hardly had Swanson left the seat than McCarthy was surprised by "Technicalities" Feehan, who sat down in the seat vacated by the shortstop.
Feehan was one of the odd characters developed by the national game, a reporter who had traveled with the Bear teams for so many years the players regarded him as a sort of venerable pest who hadn't seen a ball player since Williamson's day, and never such a catcher as Mike Kelly, a first baseman like Comisky or a fielder like Tip O'Neil. He sometimes was called "Four Eyes," from the fact that he wore large, steel-rimmed glasses of great thickness, and his other name was "Technicalities."
He was not at all interested in baseball, excepting as a business. His chief interest was in the Children's Crusades, and he had spent eight years of his spare time in libraries all over America digging out data for his history of those remarkable pilgrimages which he had written and rewritten half a dozen times. Not being a baseball fan he was eminently fair and unprejudiced, and the players thought more of the quiet, studious fellow than they did of the excitable and the partisan reporters who joined their sports and their woes.
"Mr. McCarthy," he said seriously, "did you observe anything strange in to-day's game?"
"Several strange things," assented McCarthy. "Among them that error I made early in the game."
"I mean things of an unusual nature," persisted Technicalities. "I was struck by an odd phenomenon and thought perhaps you noticed it. I find it more perplexing as I study my score books."
"What was it?" inquired McCarthy, cautious not to betray any interest.
"Did you, for instance, observe anything strange about the hits in your direction?"
"I noticed that those that didn't have cayenne pepper on them were white hot and came like greased lightning," laughed McCarthy. "I expected to find my right leg playing left field any minute."
"I was speaking numerically, although, of course, the speed of the hits enters into the phenomenon."
"They did seem to be coming my way rapidly," agreed the third baseman.
"In to-day's game I find," continued the statistician, "that there were eighteen batted balls hit in the direction of third base. You had five assists and one error and caught two line drives. I do not include foul balls, of which six line drives went near third base. Of these eighteen batted balls, fourteen were hit by right-handed batters and four by left-handers. The fourteen right-handed batters hit balls pitched inside the plate, the four left-handers hit balls outside the plate, that is, outside to them, so that practically every ball batted toward you was pitched to the inside of the plate, that is, the catcher's left. I have checked these statistics and find them correct."
"Well, what of it?" asked McCarthy.
"In the preceding games—in which you played third and in which Williams has pitched—I find that an average of twelve and a fraction batted balls per game have been hit toward third base, exclusive of fouls. In the games in which you have played and in which Williams has not pitched the average is six and a trifling fraction. You have averaged seven and one-fourth chances per game—legitimate chances—with Williams pitching, and a trifle under three chances per game when he was not pitching. Does it not seem remarkable?"
"Perhaps so," assented McCarthy. "I never studied such statistics."
"The phenomenon is the more remarkable," added the strange little man, "because the average chances per game of the third basemen of five leagues, two majors and three Class AA for the last five years has been 2 and 877-998. It is impossible to construe the figures to mean but one of two things."
"What are they?" asked McCarthy, curiously interested.
"Either it is mere coincidence or Williams is deliberately trying to lose this pennant and to make you shoulder the blame."
"That's a pretty stiff charge," remarked McCarthy, amazed at the deductions of the reporter, which fitted so well the suspicion, gradually becoming a certainty to his mind.
"Either he is pitching purposely to make the opposing batters hit balls at you," insisted Feehan, "or it just happened—and things do not just happen in baseball with that regularity."
"Possibly he is wild and can't get the ball over the plate."
"On the contrary," persisted Feehan, "he has perfect control. If he did not possess control he could not pitch so many balls to the same place."
"I'm immensely grateful," said McCarthy, touched by the kindness of the odd reporter. "It's good of you and I shan't forget it."
"I deserve no thanks," insisted Feehan. "It's merely in the line of square dealing and justice—and, speaking of justice, McCarthy, did you ever take interest in the Children's Crusades? Let me show you some of the data I dug up recently"——
He delved into his little bag, which was his constant companion, and, drawing forth a mass of scattered, disordered notes, he went into raptures of enthusiasm while describing to the player some new features of the disappearance of the French children and of the sojourn of hundreds of them as slaves in African harems.
A great throng of admirers was waiting in the station to welcome the Bears back from their successful trip. Swanson and McCarthy finally escaped from the crowd, and, jumping into a taxicab, were whirled to the hotel, where Swanson had secured rooms for both.
The hour was growing late, but after they had deposited their baggage in their rooms, Swanson proposed a walk and a late supper. It was McCarthy's first visit to the city which he represented upon the ball field and its magnificence and greatness made him forget the worries and troubles of which he seemed the center. He even forgot to detail to his chum his strange interview with the reporter until they were seated in a quiet nook of one of the great restaurants. Then, in response to some jesting allusion to the Children's Crusades by Swanson, he told the big shortstop of the array of statistics Feehan had presented.
"He's a square little guy," said Swanson. "And he's got more brains in that funny-looking little head of his than this whole bunch has. He dopes things out pretty nearly right, and when he is convinced that he is right he goes the limit. Between us there is a certain left-handed pitcher who is in hot water right now and don't know it. Speaking of the devil," he added quickly, "there's his wings flapping, and look who he is with—across the far corner there, at the little table."
McCarthy's eyes followed the route indicated and suddenly he lost interest in his food. At a small table were Williams, Secretary Tabor—and Betty Tabor.
McCarthy was silent and moody during the walk back to the hotel and seemed to have lost interest in the great glaring city, which was just commencing to dim its illumination for the night. They were in bed with the lights out when Swanson said:
"Cut out the worrying, kid. I wouldn't have a girl no one else wanted. Besides, either her father has been told by Clancy to watch that crook or else Betty Tabor is stringing him along to learn something. She despises Williams, and she wouldn't laugh at him or eat with him unless she had a purpose in it."
McCarthy could have blessed him for the words, but he assumed a dignity he did not feel and said:
"I don't see why I should be especially interested."
"Cut out the con stuff, Bo," laughed Swanson, relapsing into his old careless baseball phraseology. "You dope around like a chicken with the pip and look at her like a seasick guy seeing the Statue of Liberty and then think no one is onto you."
Reply seemed inadvisable, so McCarthy grunted and rolled over. There was a silence and then Swanson added:
"And say, Bo, this Williams is in trouble. There's me and you on his track. Clancy is wise and watching him. Old Technicalities has him doped crooked in the figures, and now Betty Tabor is smiling at him to get the facts—he hasn't a chance. It's darn hard to fix a baseball game."