Her face grew white. It was not like Lefty to lack confidence in himself. During the past months, although his injured arm had seemed to improve with disheartening slowness, he had insisted that it would come round all right before the season opened. Yet lately he had not appeared quite so optimistic. And now, after the game which was to settle his doubts, he seemed more doubtful than before. She believed that he was holding something back, that he was losing heart, but as long as there was any hope remaining he would try not to burden her with his worries.
Suddenly she clutched his shoulders with her slender hands. “It’s all wrong!” she cried. “You’ve given up the best that was in you for the Blue Stockings. You’ve done the work of two pitchers. They won’t let you go now. Even if your arm is bad at the beginning of the season, they’ll keep you on and give you a chance to get it back into condition.”
“Old Jack Kennedy would, but I have my doubts about any other manager.”
“You don’t mean that they’d let you go outright, just drop you?”
“Oh, it’s possible they’d try to sell me or trade me. If they could work me off on to some one who wasn’t wise, probably they’d do it. That’s not reckoning on Weegman. He’s so sore and vindictive that he may spread the report that I’ve pitched my wing off. I fancy he wouldn’t care a rap if that did lose Collier the selling price that could be got for me.”
“Oh, I just hate to hear you talk about being traded or sold! It doesn’t sound as if you were a human being and this a free country. Cattle are traded and sold.”
“Cattle and ball players.”
“It’s wrong! Isn’t there any way–”
“The Federals are showing the way.”
“Your sympathy’s with them. You’re not bound to the Blue Stockings; you’re still your own free agent.”