So the next afternoon Hansell had a couple of the local constables out at the grounds and tried to have Devore pinched for kicking on a decision. “Josh” got sore and framed it up to have a camera man at the park the next day to take a moving picture of a mob scene, Hansell, the umpire, to be the hero and mobbed. Hansell fell for it until he saw all the boys picking up real clods and digging the dirt out of their spikes, and then he made a run for it and never came back. That is how we lost a great umpire.
“You boys made it look too realistic for him,” declared McGraw.
Hansell had a notion that he was a runner and offered to bet Robinson, who is rather corpulent now, that he could beat him running across the field. Robinson took him, and walked home ahead of the umpire in the race.
“I don’t see where I get off on this deal,” complained McGraw when it was over. “I framed up this race for you two fellows, and then Hansell comes to me and borrows the ten to pay ‘Robbie.’”
Somebody fixed up a Turkish bath in the hotel one day by stuffing up the cracks in one of the bathrooms and turning the hot water into the tub and the steam into the radiator full blast.
Several towels were piled on the radiator and the players sat upon this swathed in blankets to take off weight. They entered the impromptu Turkish bath, wearing only the well-known smile. McGraw still maintains that it was “Bugs” Raymond who pulled out the towels when it came the manager’s turn to sit on the radiator, and, if he could have proved his case, Raymond would not have needed a doctor. It would have been time for the undertaker.
Finally comes the long wending of the way up North. “Bugs” Raymond always depends on his friends for his refreshments, and as he had few friends in Marlin in 1911, he got few drinks. But when we got to Dallas cocktails were served with the dinner and all the ball-players left them untouched, McGraw enforcing the old rule that lips that touch “licker” shall never moisten a spit ball for him. “Bugs” was missed after supper and some one found him out in the kitchen licking up all the discarded Martinis. That was the occasion of his first fine of the season, and after that, as “Bugs” himself admitted, “life for him was just one fine after another.”
At last, after the long junket through the South, on which all managers are Simon Legrees, is ended, comes a welcome day, when the new uniforms are donned and the band plays and “them woids” which constitute the sweetest music to the ears of a ball-player, roll off the tongue of the umpire:
“The batteries for to-day are Rucker and Bergen for Brooklyn, Marquard and Meyers for New York. Play ball!”
The season is on.