"I don't know if they's enough ink in this or not," he answers, handin' me a fountain pen. "Write it on the back of this card."
When the crowd sees Hector strollin' out to the box, they give him his usual reception, which was the same as the Kaiser would have got if he'd walked down Broadway along in April, 1917. The first guy up for St. Looey hit a roller through the box and Hector stood on his left shoulder tryin' to pick it up. The runner only got as far as second before Hector arose. The next guy put a neat round hole in the right field fence, makin' it two runs. Well, before it was three out they had got four more and the only guy connected with the St. Looey team that didn't get a hit was the owner. They only quit slammin' the pill because they had batted themselves sick and could no longer stagger up to the plate.
Hector comes to bat in the next innin' with the bases as full as a miner on pay night. He lets two go by, right in the slot, and he fell down skinnin' his nose, swingin' at the next for the third and last strike.
I removed him by hand and sent in a ball player to pitch the rest of the game.
"Well, Alex," I says on the way home, "what do you think of your patient?"
"Is he as bad as that every day?" he asks me.
"No," I says. "He was Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson to-day, alongside of what he usually is!"
"Hmmph!" grunts Alex. "I can see he ain't a ball player, anyway."
"You been readin' 'Sherlock Holmes,'" I says.
"Baseball ain't everything!" declares Alex, rubbin' his nose. "And the point we have to consider is—what can he do?"