Feehan was one of the odd characters developed by the national game, a reporter who had traveled with the Bear teams for so many years the players regarded him as a sort of venerable pest who hadn't seen a ball player since Williamson's day, and never such a catcher as Mike Kelly, a first baseman like Comisky or a fielder like Tip O'Neil. He sometimes was called "Four Eyes," from the fact that he wore large, steel-rimmed glasses of great thickness, and his other name was "Technicalities."
He was not at all interested in baseball, excepting as a business. His chief interest was in the Children's Crusades, and he had spent eight years of his spare time in libraries all over America digging out data for his history of those remarkable pilgrimages which he had written and rewritten half a dozen times. Not being a baseball fan he was eminently fair and unprejudiced, and the players thought more of the quiet, studious fellow than they did of the excitable and the partisan reporters who joined their sports and their woes.
"Mr. McCarthy," he said seriously, "did you observe anything strange in to-day's game?"
"Several strange things," assented McCarthy. "Among them that error I made early in the game."
"I mean things of an unusual nature," persisted Technicalities. "I was struck by an odd phenomenon and thought perhaps you noticed it. I find it more perplexing as I study my score books."
"What was it?" inquired McCarthy, cautious not to betray any interest.
"Did you, for instance, observe anything strange about the hits in your direction?"
"I noticed that those that didn't have cayenne pepper on them were white hot and came like greased lightning," laughed McCarthy. "I expected to find my right leg playing left field any minute."
"I was speaking numerically, although, of course, the speed of the hits enters into the phenomenon."
"They did seem to be coming my way rapidly," agreed the third baseman.