Now the bird I had in mind to make me win this bet from Alex was a pitcher I had on the payroll who's name was Hector Sells. He would of been just as rotten a ball player if his name had been First Base, Center Field or Short Stop. He could do everything in the world with a baseball, with the slight exception of gettin' it over the plate, and, when he pitched, his main difficulty was keepin' the pill outa left field. In the seven years he had been stealin' wages from my club his twirlin' percentage read like the thermometer in Alaska and when he come to bat, as far as he ever found out, first base was in Berlin. I put him on the third base coachin' line one afternoon and he tries to send a runner back to second when the batter triples. I tried this guy out at every position on the team and he made so many errors that the official scorers went out and bought addin' machines every time he appeared in the line-up. If they was anything on earth connected with the game of baseball that Hector could do, he never showed it to me, and puttin' a uneyform on him was the same as givin' a blind man a pair of opera glasses.
Yet with all this, that guy thought he was the greatest baseball player that ever laid hold of a glove. He not only thought it, he conceded it.
For the past year, Hector had played out the schedule from the dugout, with the exception of six games he pitched against the Athletics. He lost an even six. I sent him to every flag station in North America where they looked on baseball as a game, and Hector would come back at the end of the season with his suit case jammed full of unconditional releases. Him and pneumonia was just as easy to get rid of as far as I was concerned and we started off every season with Hector in our midst.
Three winters in succession I loaned that guy enough dough to set himself up in business, so's he'd lay off me and watch the pastime from the grandstand. He lost a cigar store shootin' craps, a pool room bettin' with the customers and a delicatessen because he eat all the stock himself. I got him a job on the road sellin' sportin' goods, and the only thing he sold all year was a pitcher's glove at $1.25. He bought that himself.
Now the thing is—why did I keep a guy like that on my club for the lengthy space of seven years? The newspaper birds claimed Hector had seen me murder somebody or somethin', because they says I wouldn't let him in a ball park with a ticket, if he didn't have somethin' on me that must be kept from the world at any price. Well, it wasn't nothin' like that—but it was somethin' just as good, as the grocer says. Me and Hector was kids together in the same ward, and when we started out to dumfound the world, he had a bankroll which his beloved father left him and I had nothin' but freckles. I practically lived off that guy till me and real money became well acquainted, so I couldn't see him get the worst of it now. It would of broke his heart if he ever got shoved outa organized baseball—he was a maniac about the game! So Hector drawed his dough every season, come what may—and at that I was doin' no more than he did for me.
I managed to keep him busy in some way about the park—always with a uneyform on—and now and then I let him pitch an innin' when we had the game locked away in the safe deposit vault. In all the seven years, he never missed a single day showin' up at the park and he was the rottenest ball player that ever stood under a shower. Them was Hector's two records!
Well, I dragged Alex out to the ball park the next day and pointed out Hector to him. We was playin' St. Looey and along around the sixth innin' we had the game sewed up so tight that they couldn't of won it in a raffle. I took out Harmon and sent Hector in to pitch.
"Gaze over this bird carefully, Alex!" I says, "because he's the baby you're gonna pay off on! I claim you are now peerin' at the champion dub of the world. If you can make a winner outa him or discover what he has failed to develop that would make him one, I'll not only pay my end of our bet with a grin, but I'll throw in a weddin' chest of silver for you and Eve Rossiter!"
"Write that down!" says Alex; "and sign your full name to it!"
"You don't think I'd welsh on you, do you?" I says, gettin' sore.