"'Will you cut me in?' I asked.
"'No, I won't,' he said with certainty. 'You're getting a good salary and you know it.'
"'Okay,' I said. I was only kidding anyway.
"'I don't want you to get nervous today,' he said.
"'Nervous?' I repeated. 'Have I ever been nervous all season?'
"'No,' he admitted, 'I've been in baseball a long time and I never saw anything like it. I never saw a kid like you, who can beat anybody and is so successful.'
"'Well,' I said, 'the reason I'm so successful is because I can beat anybody.'"
"Now aren't you getting a little carried away with your bragging?" asked Nibbles. "I mean, I'm very much enjoying your story, even though I know little about baseball except that you play it on a bass drum. But really, I think you're carrying your pride a little too far into the negative."
"Yeah," admitted Rube, "I am sorry about that. Sometimes that happens to me when I get too worked up. Anyway, I went out there that day and I pitched one of those unusual games: no hits, no runs, no errors. Twenty-seven men faced me and not one of them got to first base. And that evening in Columbus they put me up for sale, with all the Big League clubs bidding on me, like a horse being auctioned off. The Cleveland club went as high as ten thousand five hundred dollars for my contract, but the Giants went to eleven grand, and I was sold to them. At that time, that was the highest price ever paid for a baseball player.
"I reported to the New York Giants in September of 1908, as soon as the
American Association season was over. I was eigh …"