Lefty Locke, pitcher-manager

by Burt L. Standish

As a pitcher, Jones displayed no needless flourishes. His style of delivery was simple but effective. Into the swing of his long arm he put the throwing force of his fine shoulder and sinewy body. Wiley had exaggerated in boasting of the mute’s speed; nevertheless that speed was something to marvel at. Norris, the clean-up man of the Grays, who preferred smokers to any other kind, was too slow in striking at the first two pitched to him by Jones. Norris looked astounded and incredulous, and the spectators gasped.

“That’s his slow one, mates!” cried Wiley. “Pretty soon, when he gets loosened up, he’ll let out a link or two and burn a few across. The daisies are growing above the only man he ever hit with the ball.”

Although Norris was not slow in swinging at the next one, the sphere took a shoot that deceived him, and the mute had disposed of the first hitter with three pitched balls.

“And the wiseacres say there are no real heavers left in the bushes!” whooped Cap’n Wiley.

Locke was thrilled. Could it be that here was a discovery, a find, a treasure like a diamond in the rough, left around underfoot amid pebbles? The Big League scouts are the grubstakers, the prospectors, the treasure hunters of baseball; ceaselessly and tirelessly they scour the country even to the remote corners and out-of-the-way regions where the game nourishes in the crude, lured on constantly by the hope of making a big find. To them the unearthing of a ball player of real ability and promise is like striking the outcroppings of a Comstock or a Kimberly; and among the cheering surface leads that they discover, a hundred peter out into worthlessness, where one develops into a property of value. More and more the scouts complain that the ground has been raked over again and again and the prizes are growing fewer and farther between; yet every now and then, where least expected, one of them will turn up something rich that has been overlooked by journeying too far afield. The fancy that Mysterious Jones might be one of these unnoticed nuggets set Locke’s pulses throbbing.

Jones had appeared to be a trifle slender in street clothes, but now Lefty could see that he was the possessor of fine muscles and whipcord sinews. There was no ounce of unnecessary flesh upon him anywhere; he was like an athlete trained to the minute and hardened for an enduring test by long and continuous work. There seemed little likelihood that protracted strain would expose a flaw. He had speed and stamina; if he possessed the required skill and brains, there was every reason to think that he might “deliver the goods.” With the advent of the silent man upon the mound, Locke’s attention became divided between doubts about himself and interest in the performance of the mute.

Hampton, who followed Norris, was quite as helpless against the dazzling speed of Jones; he could not even foul the ball. “Great smoke, Locke!” he exclaimed, pausing on his way to center field. “That man’s a terror! He seems to groove them all, but you can’t see them come over.”

“Perhaps he can’t keep it up,” said Lefty.

“I hope not. If he does, we’ve got to win on the runs we’ve made already; there’ll be no more scoring for us. It’s up to you to hold them down.”

The southpaw held them in the fourth, but he did so by working his head fully as much as his arm. By this time he had learned something of the hitting weaknesses of the Wind Jammers, and he played upon those weaknesses successfully. To his teammates and the spectators the performance was satisfactory; to him it proved only that his brain, if not his arm, was still in perfect condition.