THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT
“Let go the balloon and come to earth you crimson-thatched, wind-jamming bush ranger,” called Tommy Nelson, president of the Brantford Green Socks, from the convention hall vestibule to discursive Claudius O’Toole, manager of the Ottawas, and the centre of a group following on the flight of steps above.
“Heraus mit him!” vamoose with that lingo you ivory-crested Fenian, we’ll shoot your team in the air like puffed rice from a Quaker Oats gun,” was the manager’s quick rejoinder, as he lighted a fragrant panatela.
“You’ll think you are playing in a vat of molasses when our merry men begin to stampede your bronchos,” continued Mr. Nelson, winking at Duff Adams and Will Lahey to the accompaniment of covert snickers from the near by delegates dispersing after the session.
AT THE BALL GAME
The members and guests in the circular group ardently participated.
They are:—E. Callaghan, General Agent, B. & L.E.R., Toronto; W. J. Connell, Traffic Manager, Linington, Connell Co., Toronto; L. L. Grabill, General Baggage Agent, G.T.R., Toronto; Late John Gray, Agent, G.T.R., Toronto; F. G. Gould, Traveling Freight Agent, G.T.R., Toronto; W. J. Hamilton, Canadian Passenger Agent, L.V.R., Toronto; T. Jackson, Traffic Manager, Jackson Manufacturing Co., Clinton; F. Jackson, Merchant, Clinton; John Jolly, Contracting Freight Agent, C.P.R., Toronto; R. McRae, Accountant, G.T.R., Toronto; P. G. Mooney, Assistant General Freight Agent, C.N.R., Toronto; T. Mullins, City Passenger Agent, C.P.R., Toronto; F. P. Nelson, C.C., D.F.A., G.T.R., Hamilton, and John Ransford, Passenger Agent, G.T.R., Clinton.
Some of the Players were:—H. C. Bourlier, G.A.P.D., C.N.R., Toronto; H. A. Carson, C.F.A., G.T.R., Montreal; A. Craig, C.P.A., C.P.R., Hamilton; Geo. Donaldson, C.F.A., G.T.R., Toronto (Overseas); T. Hagarty, L.F.O., G.T.R., Toronto; R. M. Hamilton, Superintendent, Hendrie Co., Hamilton; W. M. Hood, D.F. & P.A., C.N.R., Sudbury; W. J. Hotrum, C.C.L.A., G.T.R., Toronto; H. J. LeClair, T.P.A., C.N.R., Quebec; Tom Lockwood, T.A., Allan Line; C. McHarg, M.C.P.A., T.H. & B.R., Hamilton; A. J. Mitchell, L.O., G.T.R., Toronto; J. A. Morice, Import Department, C.P.R., Toronto; H. Peters, Fruit Merchant, Toronto; I. G. Reece, C.P.A., C.N.R., Ottawa; H. J. Roberts, C.C., D.T.A., C.P.R., Toronto; R. M. Sedgewick, Traffic Manager, Standard Chemical Co.; S. S. Stackpole, G.C.F.A., P.R.R.; J. Thomson, Superintendent, Canadian Transfer Co., Toronto; E. R. Thorpe, City Freight Agent, G.T.R., Toronto; C.L. Worth, C.C., M. D., G.T.R., Toronto.
“Ho! Ho! merry men and molasses is it? We’ll feed them the syrup to sweeten their tempers after the Redskins scalp their cow-licks and curly-me-Q’s,” the Ottawas’ chief exclaimed.
“Your bunch of pretenders would grade about Tenth in the Western Classification and that’s the tariff rating the railways give sand, bricks and other heavy, commodities” answered the director of the Green Sox.
“Believe me, President you have a raft of flotsom and jetsom as variegated as a hedge of Sweet William; a flock of tortoises I call them,” responded the ladylike O’Toole, appropriating the last word.
However, “Opinion is private property which the law cannot seize,” the old saw says.
As with all other mortals of divers pursuits, these ball tossers can stand just so much baiting and then they bristle like an old cock when young chantecler invades his yard reaching for high C. With plenty of such good natured badinage and the dissemination of unlimited sunshine, the owners and managers of the clubs composing the Inter-lake League finished the early spring meeting convened to arrange the games schedule for the current season, making due allowance for national holidays and discussing railway fares with ticket agents Jack Campbell, Albert Craig and J. B. Doran. This league comprised the Brantford Green Socks, Knotty Lee’s Hamilton Bengal Tigers, Saints of St. Thomas, home town of Bob. Emslie, National League umpire, and Gladstone Graney with Lajoie’s Cleveland “Naps”; also the Cockneys of London, where Pittsburg Pirate George Gibson dwells neighborly beside the railway triumvirate Messrs. Ernie Ruse, Harry MacCallum and Hubert Hays, with Ottawas of Ottawa and Peterborough Blue Jays completing the roster. The rivalry and fortunes of the bustling sextette, as will later be seen, ebbed and flowed between Brantford, the hub of two thirds of the circuit, presided over by president Silent Thomas Nelson, C.P.A., G.T.R., nick-named the “Sphinx” for his wisdom and ability to guard a secret deal, as far east as Ottawa on the big river where Claudius O’Toole had cajoled and berated his henchmen into winning the bunting the season before.
When the present Mr. O’Toole was yet a squalling infant the suffering, patient sponsors saw to it that his name was set down in the vestry register as “Claudius” with the saint’s name Dominick added, but the creepy nickname “Spider” automatically clung to “Claude” like the monkey man to the neck of the famous Sinbad the sailor who figured in Arabian Nights. The youth grew rangy, with long shifty legs, and his arms, ornamented with grapplers, seemingly as numerous and resourceful as the tentacles of a cuttle fish, were the wonder and pride of the freshmen at St. Augustine’s Seminary who doted on his prowess and perennial good nature.
At all times an awed respecter of Irish tradition, Spider O’Toole reverenced St. Patrick’s memory in full measure, and like that venerable sainted man, could not tolerate anything that wriggled: and who could blame him. The word “cringe” was not in his encyclopaedia and as he never “crawled” himself, he abhorred spiders and snakes as the devil scowls on piety. With him they were as popular as a horse thief in Utah. His dislike for cobras, constrictors, rattlers and all that ilk that do the hesitation glide without legs, was no spasmodic, abnormal antipathy, mark you, born of flirtations with the grape when purple, for he had never been known to arrive at a condition superinduced by an over-indulgence in the bottled and popular elements of conviviality. Always a man of nerve and aggressiveness, he shunned those toy cameras and fake electric pocket flashes, concealing jumping adders as he would the wails of the family Banshee, while buggy whips and garden hose lying about in the gloaming were sure to send shivers gamboling up and down his spinal network. Naturalists tell us the sagacious elephant, big as he is, will promptly side-step a lizard—and why not?
One rainy evening after the teams of the Inter-lake League had rid themselves of Charley-horse, glass arms and proud flesh, and were schooled and whipped into tolerable fettle for the ordeal of endurance and dexterity, with the opening day a short week off, Thomas Nelson, President of the Green Sox, met Spider O’Toole with others of the clan in the Algonquin Hotel rotunda. With them were Francis Nelson, Sporting Editor of the Globe, Dick Kearns, Fitzgerald and Charlie Good, and near by in the billiard room Harry Thorley and Billy Hamilton were making some fancy shots with a party they were booking to Europe, via the L.V.R. and White Star Line. Said Thomas quite carelessly, to Claudius, as he shifted the position of an undiscernable portion of Piper Heidseick from one cheek to the other, “We think we have better than an even break with the Ottawas on dates for the season’s schedule Mr. O’Toole: in other words, my Christian friend, I have the edge on you.”
Oh, have you Mr. Sphinx—well don’t strain your diaphragm gloating over that paper advantage: I’ll dull your edge so badly that you will have your spavined free lances at the horse shoers in a month, I will, so I will and I’ll leave it to your friend Ira Thomas, Mitch. Thomas or St. Thomas.
“I trow not, Spider. We have gathered in the net as fine a cluster of brilliants as ever crossed the Giant’s Causeway since the days the Gauls hung to the branches with their tails. I hope Connie Mack is unaware of their speed.”
“Mr. McGillicudy is still a young man: too bad to have him choke to death with laughter and he in his prime,” commented Claudius O’Toole.
“The Green Stockings are a lot of limber base ball professors, bright as patent stove polish, and when your kindergarten is introduced to their science.”
At this juncture, Will. Connell and Harry Watkins with the “Great Northern”, who had just come in from the theatre after enjoying Dick Sheridan’s “School for Scandal”, naively enquired if Mr. O’Toole’s redskins would win their opening game with the Peterborough Bluejays a week hence, adding “The birds are touted tough as hickory and hard nuts to crack”.
“We’ll crack their kernels as sure as Hades is a man trap,” said the Spider, “or make them work so hard they’ll ferment and blow their heads off.”
“As a precaution, have your willie pink collegians remove their hobble skirts,” chimed in Tom the Sphinx, with a significant smile.
“If the Bluejays loom such a menace to our aspirations, gentlemen,” retorted O’Toole, with a twinkle in his eye, “my humorous contemporary of the Brantford Green Legs had better buy nine shrouds now and fix a date for the wake.”
“Too much levity Spider, too much levity: ‘a sooty chimney spoileth many a beefsteak’. Do be advised” continued Nelson, childlike and bland. “The Green Sox team has one batter who is a potential phenomenon. On a clear day he can propel the sphere across the lagoon to the Cape Verde Islands and make it sizzle so that the natives think it is a Jack Johnson or a sputtering meteor from Mars.”
This was intended to spike the mortar of the rangy collegian but it didn’t.
“See here, Mr. President, be careful that no one hangs crepe on your nose or the public will get on to the fact that your brain is dead”, was the response.
“I’ll bet Senator, the Irishmen will stitch up your savages so neatly they will be about as effective as a camera fiend in a London fog.”
“If that strain is put on us,” cried O’Toole, “I’ll ride a slippery log over the Chaudiere Dam at Ottawa and you can be there to see from the bridge north of the Chateau Laurier.” And he wished later there was bark on that log.
Some one said “Would you indulge in a mild libation if properly approached?” and a wag you all know said “We do not know you well enough to refuse you, is the gentleman with the ‘still’ exclusive?”
“So exclusive, my boy,” was the reply, “that you have to be both a True Blue and a Knight of Columbus to gain an entree”, and with that their voices died away in the distance.
Tim Mullins, Mel. Thomson and Jim Edwards of the G.T.R., who came up from Ottawa said at dinner the day Peterborough and Ottawa clashed that Spider O’Toole refused spaghetti because it squirmed and slid off his fork like the tempter in the Garden of Eden and he finished the meal without ridding himself of a half-defined presentment of evil. It beats the Dutch what odd little whims and superstitious notions some of those base ball players cherish and permit to influence their daily actions and fortunes.
Try to develop on the film of your memory the picture of a moderately expansive diamond and outfield, the grass exceptionally abundant on account of the adjacent moisture and the entire enclosure surrounded by the shapely maple and a variety of other trees adorned with vivid spring foliage. Include in the perspective the hurrying, foamy waters of the serpentine Otonabee River flanking the parkside before spreading wide to the harbor beyond and you glimpse the arena where Claudius O’Toole lost his first game to the merciless Bluejays and likewise his wager.
These were the home grounds of the Peterborough Bluejays, and the players located on the chessboard as strategetically as might be, were there “with the lard in their hair,” eager to circumvent the Ottawa nine and provide an interesting premiere that afternoon for their supporters who buzzed with expectancy and speculation, tier over tier, as the early innings progressed.
Jim Skinner and E. T. Carr encouraged the Jays, and in the telegraph cupola where Tony Webster was at the key, sat Jimmie Anderson, Jack Tinning and John Melville, hoping to ticket the players to Western Ontario.
Considerable betting and some odds had been laid here and there on the result among the fans and normal local adherents, and in several outside quarters anticipation was keen, but down in the reeds and stone piles beside the rushing eddies, where a large water snake and his partner were basking with several smaller amphibious creatures in the sunshine, nothing was known of all this. The pair in sable and bronze habiliments, displaying the activity and boldness peculiar to the breed in mating season and their need of food after long hibernation, were fearlessly foraging beside the sedge at the river’s edge, and woe betide the luckless chub in the shallows or lazy frog on shore caught napping. The ball ground outfield ran down close to the river, terminating at a high fence, and was uniform and level save for a few depressions in the black loam where was once a swamp. Owing to the dampness and shade the grass refused to grow hereabouts. The game progressed with tantalizing uncertainty until the pivotal seventh innings, the advantage resting first with the Bluejays and then with the Redskins. At this point the Ottawas gained the ascendancy with a batting rally and Spider O’Toole, who played deep centre field, worked closer in stimulating his men with “Ginger up Germany, to the youth at second—you can’t coax a living from the public on that form.” And again, to the young spitball pitcher, “Steady Slim, nice work lad, take your time, you have them coming and going as easy as pulling on an old glove.”
At the conclusion of the eighth inning the score stood 4-4 and the Spider’s braves in their half of the ninth chalked up but one more circuit as the Bluejays, though nervous did not crack and were making no costly errors. The stands began to rumble as the home players went to bat for the last time, a boy clinging to an over-hanging branch called “Oh Mr. O’Toole, we’ll make you take your gruel” and the palpable excitement of some of the ladies who were on their feet, caused otherwise sober spectators to turn the meeting into temporary pandemonium with waving arms, hats and vocal extravagances. M. J. Baker and his friend Jamieson, came with the saints, and the stentorian tones of Stanton A. Baker, representing the “Great Western”, calling the plays to Tommie Gormally and Harvey Hagerman over at Oshawa, could be plainly heard above the din.
In the midst of the uproar Eddie D—— and his acquaintance O. G. C. Willard, faultlessly attired, when passing the grand stand, and thus perchance unconsciously giving the ladies a treat, overheard an Old Country friend with John Ransford exclaim,
“Aw, my word, this is a strange game!”
“How so strange?” queried John.
“The players seem to have an unlimited license to indulge in personalities, don’t you know—hear how they ‘rat’ each other!”
“They don’t mean it, those boys are milk-fed, college-bred, and the salt of the earth”, explained the sage from Clinton.
“My Eye, observe the pitcher and catcher are even now conspiring to beat the batter”, continued the newcomer.
“Oh, that is only camouflage to deceive the enemy,” replied his host. The visitor’s marked impartiality towards the stubborn progress of the contending teams recalls the attitude of the lady whose husband was in mortal combat with a grizzly bear, exclaiming, “I never saw a fight I cared so little about who won”.
As was prognosticated, the heavy hitter to Cape Verde Islands arose to the occasion and smacked a fair one on the nose to left which the fielder fumbled. He lead off a dozen feet and made second with a hook slide when a foul tip clipped the catchers’ finger and the ball rolled to the screen. The tension increased. From where he stood, legs apart and watchful, O’Toole stormed and upbraided at the top of his voice, swearing by the web-footed, bald-headed Siamese twins, while the pitcher and backstop conferred. The umpire’s indicator shewed two men on bases and no one out when the third birdman stepped over to the plate and stood motionless as Sejanus on his horse. His plan or the captain’s orders counseled a waiting policy, and such patience was repaid with four balls, earning first base, forcing his mates and filling the bags. Whoops and yells tore jagged holes in the atmosphere, and even momentarily disconcerted the fourth and last friendly batter. “Slim” threw him a swift ball at which he swung to no purpose, and it lodged with a resounding plop in the cavity of the catcher’s mitt. Again the man on the mound moistened the now soiled horsehide and repeated the performance, but the strain was terrific and his features registered it plainly. The next one was low and wide. Once more he threw, transmitting decided curve to the sphere, but it lacked sustained velocity and slowed down in progress. The waiting batter saw his opportunity, breathed a fervent “Welcome Mr. Spalding” and received it squarely. The ball sailed over the pitcher’s head and past the shortstop’s clutching digits just at the instant Spider O’Toole was vociferating “Oh, you son of a snail”. This compliment to the exhausted “Slim” smothered in his mouth as he realized the sphere was heading to his territory. True to instinct, his tentacular mechanism sprang alert and making a sanguine, mighty vault his fingers just touched the ball, the contact and a puff of wind diverting its course and down it came behind him not far off. The dirty ball ceased rolling two yards away, resting in one of those shady, somewhat deep hollows in the black loam close to the river bank and fence. Alive to the crucial situation quivering at half cock on the diamond and savagely intent on thwarting the runners as well as to maintain his lead, the Spider spun round in a flash of time and half blindly leaping on the dirty horsehide stumbled, falling at full length face down as his hand closed over the coveted ball.
O ye hooting witches of the midnight orgy and screeching jagaurs squirming in the fatal coils of Columbian pythons, never was there such a scream and succession of fearful cries emitted as arose from the prostrate player rolling over and over before the multitude in an agonized struggle to right himself. The approaching bay of a hungry winter wolf pack in full tongue is unequalled as a shudder producer and fearful indeed, our ancestors say, were the howls of redskins bent on massacre. The field and stand had never listened to these, but they heard Spider O’Toole and were transfixed with thrills in speechless anticipation. Wild eyed and sweating they found him, the grimey ball still in his grasp and two water snakes wound about his wrist and forearm with ugly heads and forked tongues shooting this way and that as their bodies writhed and rubbed his bare skin in efforts to free themselves from his powerful clutch, poor O’Toole dancing in near convulsions, meanwhile beseeching the rescuers to free him from the loathsome girdle. It would appear that the reptiles had come out of the water, as they sometimes do, and after the manner of their kind, curled up together and gone to sleep in one of the swampy depressions close to the fence bounding extreme centre field, and this was the handful the fingers of Claudius O’Toole closed on. The shortstop and fielder who first reached their horrified leader state sub rosa that he was muttering pieces of prayers, swearing on the bones of King Kelly, and vowing by Ptolemy’s ancient mummies that he would nail those flying runners at the plate. In his wanderings he was heard to mention “Log over the Chaudiere”, “See their flat, evil heads” and “St. Patrick to the rescue”.
Thomas J. Nelson,
City Passenger and Ticket Agent, G.T.R., Brantford, Ont.; former President, Brantford Baseball Club.
When the commotion subsided and the contented Peterboroughese were discussing the absorbing topic on their way home, Mister O’Toole disrobed in the dressing room and while introducing his friends Gerald O’Flaherty and Jimmie Goodall to Mr. Nelson, declared by all the hairy chested “oorang ootangs” in the Zambesi Country that he would in future manage his team from the bench when they clashed with the Bluejays at home. Therefore you may not view Spider O’Toole in action again beside the winding Otonabee River, but sooner or later, he will emulate a spike-heeled river driver with peavie in hand, riding a pine log over the Chaudiere in order that a pound of flesh may be delivered to Silent Tom Nelson, President of the Brantford Green Sox.
VIEW OF THE FIRST AMERICAN RAILWAY TRAIN