"In any case," said the shadow, not wanting to get into a debate about his use of the word skunk, "I was as shocked as you all seem to be.
"'You don't mean that, Dad!" I said.
"'Yes, I do.'
"'Well,' I replied. 'I'm going. And some day you'll be proud of me.'
"'Proud!' he said. 'You're breaking my heart, and I don't ever want to see you again.'
"'I will not break your heart,' I said. 'I'll add more years to your life. You wait and see.'
"And so it was that I went to Indianapolis. They optioned me out to
Canton in the Central League for the rest of the 1907 season, and I won
twenty-three games with them, which was one-third of all the games the
Canton Club won that year."
"Good for you, Rube!" said Elephant, genuinely proud of his new friend.
"The next year—that would have been 1908—I went to Spring Training with the Indianapolis Club. We went to French Lick Springs, Indiana. After three weeks there we went back to Indianapolis and played a few exhibition games before the season opened. Well, believe it or not, the first club to come in for an exhibition game was the Cleveland team: Napoleon Lajoie, Terry Turner, Elmer Flick, George Stovall and the whole bunch that I used to carry bats for. When they came on the field I was already warming up.
"'Hey!' a couple of them yelled at me. 'What are you doing here? Are you the bat boy here?'