After placing a ball between four steel fingers and a cast iron thumb, Goggles touched a button and the thing began a low puff-puff-puff that resembled low, heavy breathing. Johnny was mystified and amused beyond belief.
“Watch this curve!” Goggles shouted a moment later. He touched a button. A steel arm rose in air, wound up for all the world like a professional pitcher, then let fly. The ball shot forward, took a sudden broad curve, then went thud against Johnny’s big mit. A second ball, then a third followed and all took that same sharp curve.
“You set the fingers,” Goggles explained in a matter-of-fact voice. “Look at this straight, fast one.” Once again the steel arm went through its motion. This time the ball, shooting straight ahead like a cannon ball, cut the plate squarely in the middle.
“That,” said Johnny solemnly, “is the strangest thing I ever saw. A mechanical pitcher!”
“Nothing less!” Goggles agreed.
“Whe—where’d you get him?”
“Hop Horner and I have been working on him down at the electric shop for months. You see there’s a little motor inside that generates electricity. Electricity runs him. All a fellow has to do is to set his fingers and operate the controls. As I said before, he can even rave at the umpire. Watch!” He punched two buttons and old Irons O began bobbing his outlandish head. His steel teeth cracked together again and again, while from his metal throat there came sounds resembling the complaints of a wildcat chased up a tree. “He—he’s almost perfect!” Goggles admitted proudly.
“Yes,” Johnny agreed, “but what good is he? You can’t expect another ball team to let you substitute a—a machine for a real flesh-and-blood pitcher.”
“No, you can’t do that,” Goggles agreed, “but you can do this—it came to me just last night. You can announce an exhibition game. Get Centralia to come over and play us just for fun—fun and profit. We’d have a complete sell-out. Can’t you see it? Big headlines: ‘Come and See Irons O, the Mechanical Pitcher, Perform!’ Why even Big Bill would have to come and see that game! That game would bring in the first hundred dollars or so toward that four thousand.” Goggles went hopping about in his excitement.
“Sounds good to me,” Johnny agreed.