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MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
Fake, Freak or Phenom?
By WILL H. GREENFIELD
their little game.
“Wait till these big leaguers look Grady over the second time,” he admonished his comrades. “Any rube can get away with his stuff with the boosting and the luck he has had. He can’t last in big company, anyhow, because he’s too stuck up. He never mixes with any of you boys, and he triés for advertising by wearing his gloves all the time. Why, he wears a specially-made glove on his right hand before he comes to the bench in any game he is pitching. He goes to bat with gloves on, and nobody ever saw him off the field without gloves. He even eats with ’em on! He’s playing his extra thumbs for all the newspaper notices they are worth!”
“And they are worth a whole lot, Jack,” grinned Buck Coleman. “It’s the first time in history that a man has appeared in the game with a couple of extra thumbs, and nobody can tell me that this bird don’t know how to use them. He’s a good fellow, Jack, and he’s here to stay.”
“That’s what you think,” growled Dissler. “I’m betting he wears a wrist watch and sits on the floor when he puts on his shoes and stockings. Why, he won’t see that a freak like him isn’t any company for Alma Kent.”
Buck turned a shrewd look upon his captain and emitted a low, protracted whistle.
“So that’s how the land lays!” he exclaimed. “I hadn’t noticed it myself, Jack, and maybe there’s only your jealousy in it, but I intend to size things up for himself. Alma and me were always good pals, you know.”
Alma Kent came upon the pair at this very moment—a slim figure in softest gray—a queenly light poised figure, with an air of gentle, gracious dignity.
“Talking about me again, you great big brutes?” she laughed musically, looking smilingly from one to the other, the slant-wise line of her tip-tilted hat bringing out all the delicate beauty of her face.
Jack Dissler gulped. She was reminiscent of the little Dresden china shepherdess one sees, the very essence of daintiness, and he stared with lips that hung apart in stupefied vacuity.
Buck Coleman’s admiration was just as great, but because he recognized the hopelessness of any tender feeling he could approach her without apprehension and incoherence.
“We were just saying that you know as much baseball as your dad, Alma,” prevaricated Buck easily. “Jack was boosting your dad for picking up Thumbs Grady.”
Miss Kent smiled with her eyes.
“Don’t jolly me, Buck,” she cautioned. “Dad doesn’t know as much baseball as Martin Chew, and he could tell you so if he wanted to tell the truth. Do you think Mr. Grady is a real world-beater, Jack, honestly?”
“Of course he does,” interjected Buck Coleman avidly. “He was just saying so. Wasn’t you, Jack?”
Dissler failed to find intelligible speech and made a dry, automatic sound of assent.
“Why don’t you boys call Mr. Grady something.else besides Thumbs?” the girl went on. “It’s a horrid nickname,
and his fine, quiet manners were irresistible.
Colonel Kent was among the first to congratulate him after the game.
“You worked like an old veteran, Grady,” he declared heartily. “I’m glad I believed that old liar Chew when he was singing your praises, and I have an idea the Beavers will be glad to have you before the season’s over.”
“Thank you, sir.” Grady’s smile was a winning flash of milk-white teeth accompanied by a cordial grasp of his gloved hand. “Mr. Chew didn’t lie about me, however. I don’t mind being called Thumbs at all.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that,” hastily assured the Colonel. “He laid it on rather thick about your ability, that’s all.” .
“I hope to justify his good opinion, sir. You see, Colonel, I look at it this way: I can’t help being better than the average pitcher because nature
has given me an extra supply of thumbs. I don’t mind people calling me Thumbs, but I object to being inspected like a curiosity in a sideshow. That is the reason I wear these gloves all the time.”
“I cannot blame you, Grady; I shouldn’t like it myself.”
Thumbs Grady won six games before the end of May, all without a great deal of apparent effort. The critics decided, along with Colonel Kent, that Martin Chew’s latest marvel was something more than a flash in the pan. Grady’s teammates were enthusiastic in their approval—all but Jack Dissler, the captain and second baseman.
Dissler always spoke deprecatingly of successful recruits, and he never credited anybody with being sincere. He always showed that he grasped
“Certainly; I have every faith in Buck’s judgment.”
To Chew’s immeasurable delight and Colonel Kent’s vague satisfaction, the veteran catcher of the Beavers had a glowing report for their owner.
“Colonel,” said Buck the following afternoon, “this Grady fellow is the best yet. He’s got curves that twist and turn and pop and singe, and his corkscrew curve beats anything I’ve ever seen. He’s going to ask you to let me catch him, Colonel, and I want the job.”
“All right, Buck,” rejoined the pleased Colonel. “I wasn’t to try out any more of Martin’s finds, but a pitcher with surplus thumbs would interest any baseball man. I have to be very careful with Martin, you know, for he is inclined to give any decent young fellow a spring trip at the expense of the club. I wouldn’t give his son a trial for that reason,
and the boy might be a fairly good twirler at that.”
“I heard he was,” said Buck indifferently; “but we can’t be bothered trying out our relations when he got a world beater like this Thumbs Grady.”
Colonel Cyrus Kent got his first glimpse of Thumbs Grady when the latter pitched his first game against the Tigers. He saw a big, sinewy youngster with a handsome, bronzed face, and lithe, graceful movements. A glance told him that the new pitcher was no pampered son of wealth, for the stamp of toil was set indelibly upon every inch of his splendid physique. He won the crowd from the start, and when he breezed home on the chin strap an easy victor the fans gave him a royal reception. His every action was that of a born ball player,
Colonel Kent leaned back in his lounge chair, frowning at the pipe in his hand and stroking its polished bowl.
“Martin Chew,” he said slowly, “you are such a notorious liar I don’t know when you are telling the truth, but a baseball pitcher with two thumbs on each hand interests me exceedingly. He ought to be worth a trial.”
Martin Chew tried to look aggrieved, and failing, gave free rein to a fat chuckle of satisfaction.
“As long as I have you interested,” he gurgled contentedly, “I don’t mind the hard names you call me. I ought to quit you right off, but ,you need a scout like me, and I pity your ignorance. Who the deuce found all the stars that shine on your old ball team today? Modesty bids me pause for reply.”
Colonel Kent sucked his pipe, sent several globular puffs like toy balloons eeilingward, and replied with ready good nature:
“You shall have it, Martin. You have found me some wonderful baseball players and—and just as many monumental misfits. And the failures have been outnumbered by the fakes. When you like a youngster you can lie about his abilities with a perfection of finish that is the envy of the ambitious and the despair of the clever. You have unearthed everything from escaped convicts to penniless dukes, from desperate outlaws to circus freaks. And now it is a fellow by the name of ‘Thumbs’ Grady. Honestly now, as between old friends, what is this Grady—freak, fake or phenom ? The truth, Martin!”
“Freak, Colonel, but the greatest pitcher of them all, so help me Bob!”
“There you go again! Whenever you grow so extravagant in your praise I’m inclined to be suspicious. Moreover, I had decided that we wouldn’t try out any bushers this year. Our "staff is pretty strong as it stands, though I’ll admit that a man with surplus thumbs must have great possibilities as a pitcher.”
“Possibilities!” echoed Martin Chew. “I should say he has—and then some! Why, man alive, there’s never been anything like this-fellow in baseball —and he’s just been mustered out of the army! Get that? Hero_ and freak! Why, every manager in the world would gobble him up if they knew where T have him hidden!”
“Come down to brass tacks—what’s he got?”
“Four thumbs, a corkscrew curve , that Ed Delehanty couldn't hit with a steam shovel, and a war record that won him a commission over there!”
Colonel Kent gave a deep sigh of resignation. “Trot him out, Martin. His extra thumbs hit me hardest. I’ll be hanged if I can see how a man so liberally endowed by nature can avoid being a successful pitcher.”
Martin Chew was grinning from ear to ear. “Colonel,” he chuckled, “this try-out must be in private. Gra:dy is a sensitive chap and I don’t want him scared off the premises right at the start. You know that Buck Coleman knows a pitcher when he sees one, don’t you? Well, will you accept his verdict?”
MOOSEHEART BASE BALL TEAM AND ATHLETIC DIRECTOR OSW ALT
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