"We win. Give us our money."
All participated but Moxey, who lay moaning on the ground by the home plate.
Donovan strolled out to the debate and smiled his magic smile. "Take yer base," bawled the emboldened ump, and waved the run in. Al got five dollars for the day's playing and three dollars for the day's betting, and the Prairie Views walked off, bats conspicuous on shoulders, yelling, "Yah!" at the enemy.
"Chee," said Moxey to his playmates when they reached the family entrance, "me for the big irrigation." And it was so.
Moxey shifted his foot, called his little circle around him close and then inserted his dark, fleshless talon into his baseball shirt. "That gave me an awful wallop what win the game," he said; "if I hadn't slipped me little pad in after the eight', it might a' put me away, understand." He took out his protection against dead balls, an ingenious and inconspicuous felt arrangement to be worn under the left arm by right-handed batters. And all present felt again that there had been injustice in the preference of McClaughrey.
Whenever they asked Moxey where he lived, he answered, "West," and let it go at that. He always turned up for the next game, no matter how often plans had been changed since he had last seen any of them. That was all they knew about him. He caught for them, often won for them, drank beer with them and then disappeared completely until the next half-holiday.
Perhaps Al was his most intimate friend, and Al was the only one who learned his secret. "Say, Al," he blurted out almost fiercely one evening, "your folks is Irish, ain't they?"
"Irish-American," corrected Al.
"Well, mine's Yiddishers, and the most Yiddish Yiddishers y'ever see."
Moxey seemed very bitter about it and Al waited for more.