"'Murray,' McGraw said. 'What did I tell you to do?'
"'You told me to bunt,' Murray said, not looking quite so happy anymore. 'But you know what happened, Mac. Camnitz put one right in my gut, so I cow-tailed it.'
"'Where did you say he put it?' asked McGraw.
"'Right in my gut,' Murray says again.
"'Well,' said McGraw, I'm fining you a hundred dollars, and you can try putting that right in your gut, too!' And off he went.
"Oh, God! I never laughed so much in my life! Murray never did live that down. Years later something would happen and we'd yell to Murray, 'Hey Red, is that right in your gut?'
"There were a lot of grand guys on that club: Christy Mathewson and Chief Meyers, Larry Doyle and Fred Snodgrass, Al Bridwell and Bugs Raymond. Bugs Raymond! Ah, yes! What a terrific spitball pitcher he was. Bugs drank a lot, you know, and sometimes it seemed like the more he drank the better he pitched. They used to say that he didn't spit on the ball: he blew his breath on it, and the ball would come up drunk.
"Actually, there was very little drinking in baseball in those days. It's a shame that drinking will become more and more commonplace in American sports with the passage of time. I have seen it, and it is sad. Myself, I've never smoked or took a drink in my life. I always said you can't burn the candle at both ends. You want to be a ballplayer, be a ballplayer. If you want to go out and carouse and chase around, do that. But you can't do them both at once.
"Of course," continued Rube Marquard's shadow, 'when we were on the road, we had a nightly eleven o'clock bed check. At eleven o'clock we all had to be in our rooms and the trainer would come around and check us off. We'd usually have a whole floor in a hotel and we'd be two to a room. I always roomed with Matty all the while I was on the Giants. What a grand guy he was! The door would be wide open at eleven o'clock and the trainer would come by with a board with all the names on it. He'd poke his head in: Mathewson, Marquard, check. And lock the door. Next room, check, lock the door.
"As far as I was concerned, I never drank a drop even when I was in show business. In 1912 I made a movie with Alice Joyce and Maurice Costello, and then I was in vaudeville for three years, Blossom Seeley and I. That's when she was my wife. It didn't work out, though. I asked her to quit the stage. I told her I could give her everything she wanted.