“That’s the talk, Hutch,” chuckled the Bancroft manager. “You’ve got some team, and you oughter be able to make it interestin’ for the rest of us, if the rubes let you have your swing. It was that old fox, Cope, who got Deever away from me arter I had Pat as good as signed, which makes me feel a bit raw, natural. Outside of Deever, and Locke, and a few others, I s’pose the team’s practically your make-up?”
“Then you’ve got another guess coming,” returned Bob Hutchinson. “Skillings, Lace, Crandall, and Hickey make the whole of my picking; Cope practically got together the rest of the bunch. But wait; some of ’em won’t hold their jobs long, between you and me, Mike.
“Perhaps we hadn’t better chin any longer, for I see we’re being watched, and the people of this town are so hot against Bancroft, and you in particular, that they might get suspicious, and think there was something crooked doing if we talked too long.”
“Guess that’s right,” admitted Riley. “They ain’t got no love for me in Kingsbridge, ’count of our rubbing it inter them last year. Makes me laugh, the way they squealed. They were so sore they swore they’d have a team to beat us this year at any cost. That’s how you got your job; they decided to have a reg’ler manager, who could give all his time and attention to handlin’ the team. Sorry for you, Hutch, but if they beat Bancroft under the wire with the bunch they’ve scraped together, I’ll quit the game for good. So long.”
Having learned that Hutchinson was not wholly responsible for the make-up of the Kingsbridge nine, Riley did not hesitate to express himself in this manner, thus betraying the disdain in which he really held his opponents of the day.
Only once since the organization of the so-called Northern League, which really had very little organization whatever, being run, like many small, back-country “leagues,” in a loose, hit-or-miss fashion—only once had Bancroft failed to win the championship; and that year Riley, a minor leaguer before age and avoirdupois had deposited him in the can, had not handled the club.
Bancroft was a city, and it cut her fans deeply to be downed on the diamond by a smaller place, besides severely wounding in their pockets some of the sports who had wagered real money. Hence the former successful manager was called back to the job, at which he was always prepared to make good through any means available.
Kingsbridge had entered the league the previous season, filling the place of a town that, loaded with baseball debts, and discouraged by poor success, had dropped out. Owing its existence to Cyrus King, lumberman and pulp manufacturer, Kingsbridge was barely four years old, yet its inhabitants already numbered nearly five thousand.
Furthermore, it was confidently looking forward to the time, believed to be not far distant, when it should outstrip the already envious city of Bancroft, and become the “metropolis” of that particular region.
While pretending to scoff at the “mushroom village,” Bancroft was secretly disturbed and worried, fearing the day when Kingsbridge, through the enterprise of its citizens, the interest and power of its founder, and the coming of a second railroad, which was seeking a charter, would really forge to the front, and leave the “big town down the river” in the lurch. Therefore, quite naturally, the rivalry between the two places was intense in other things besides baseball.