“That means that we’ll win the flag even with our bad beginning,” declared McRae. “And now just one other thing, Joe. I want you to feel perfectly free to discuss with Robbie and me anything you think will be for the best interests of the team. If you think any man ought to be fired, tell me so. If you think of any player we can go out and get, tell me that, too. We’ll welcome any suggestions. Have you anything of that kind now in mind? If so, let’s have it.”
“I certainly don’t want any one fired,” said Joe, with a smile. “At least, not for the present. As to getting any new players, I saw something in the evening papers a half an hour ago that set me thinking. Have you seen that the Yankees have determined to let Hays go?”
“No, I haven’t,” replied McRae with quickened interest. “I haven’t looked at to-night’s papers. But after all that won’t do us any good. Some other club in the American League will snap him up.”
“That’s what I should have thought,” answered Joe. “But the surprising thing is that all the other clubs in the American have waived claims upon him. That leaves us free to make an offer for him, if we want him.”
“That’s funny,” mused McRae. “Remember the way he played against us in the World Series? He had us nailed to the mast and crying for help.”
“He sure did,” agreed Robbie. “But he hasn’t been going very well since then. Rather hard to manage in the first place, and then, too, he seems to be losing his effectiveness. If no other club in the American League wants him, he must be nearly through.”
“That’s the way it struck me at first when I read the telegram,” said Joe. “Then I got to thinking it over. Why don’t the other clubs in the American League want him?”
“I’ll bite,” said McRae. “What’s the answer?”
“Perhaps it’s this,” suggested Joe. “Hays, as you know, has that peculiar cross-fire delivery that singles him out among pitchers. No other pitcher in either League has one just like it. It isn’t that it’s so very effective when you come to know it. But because it’s so unlike any other, it puzzles all teams until they get used to it. That’s the way it was with us in the Series. The first two games we couldn’t do a thing to him. In the third we were beginning to bat him more freely.
“Now, what does that lead up to? Just this. The other teams in the American League have become so used to his pitching that it’s lost its terrors. If any one of them bought him from the Yankees, they’d have to stack him up against the seven other teams in their League who have learned to bat him without trouble.