Lefty o' the bush

After running his eye over the Kingsbridge batting order, Mike Riley, manager of the Bancroft “Bullies,” rolled the black cigar well into the corner of his mouth, lifted himself ponderously to his feet, and walked across toward the bench of the home team.

Kingsbridge had taken the field for practice, the visitors having warmed up already. The Northern League, a genuine “bush” organization, had opened two days earlier in Bancroft and Fryeburg, but this was to be the first game of the season in Kingsbridge, a hustling, crude, though ambitious pulp-mill town.

As it was Saturday afternoon, when the mills closed down at three o’clock, there was certain to be a big crowd in attendance, double assurance of which could be seen in the rapidly filling grand stand and bleachers, and the steady stream of humanity pouring in through the gates.

As Riley approached, a lean, sallow man, with a hawk-beak nose, rose from the home bench and nodded, holding out a bony hand, which, cold as a dead fish, was almost smothered in the pudgy paw put forth to meet it.

“Hello, Hutch!” gurgled the manager of the Bullies, with a show of cordiality, although he quickly dropped the chilling hand. “How’s tricks? See you took a fall outer Fryeburg yistidday.”

“Yes, we got away with it,” answered the local manager, in a monotonous, dead-level voice, lacking wholly in enthusiasm. “But the ‘Brownies’ are a cinch; nothing but a bunch of raw kids.”

“Uh-huh!” grunted Riley, twisting his thumb into the huge watch chain which spanned the breadth of his bulging waistcoat; “that’s right. Still, you didn’t have much leeway to spare, did ye?”

“Put it over by one measly run, that’s all. Deever’s arm went on the blink in the seventh, and the greenhorns came near hammering out a win. Locke managed to hold ’em.”

“Who is this Locke? I see he’s down to wing ’em for you to-day. Where’d you find him, huh?”

“Don’t ask me who he is. I never heard of him before. He’s some green dub of a port-side flinger old man Cope picked up. You know Cope used to play the game back in the days of the Deluge, and he thinks he knows all about it. As he’s chairman of the Kingsbridge Baseball Association, and one of the heaviest backers of the team, folks round here let him meddle enough to keep him appeased. All the same, long as they’ve hired me to manage, I’m going to manage, after I’ve shown ’em how much Cope don’t know about it.”

“That’s the talk, Hutch,” chuckled the Bancroft manager. “You’ve got some team, and you oughter be able to make it interestin’ for the rest of us, if the rubes let you have your swing. It was that old fox, Cope, who got Deever away from me arter I had Pat as good as signed, which makes me feel a bit raw, natural. Outside of Deever, and Locke, and a few others, I s’pose the team’s practically your make-up?”

“Then you’ve got another guess coming,” returned Bob Hutchinson. “Skillings, Lace, Crandall, and Hickey make the whole of my picking; Cope practically got together the rest of the bunch. But wait; some of ’em won’t hold their jobs long, between you and me, Mike.

“Perhaps we hadn’t better chin any longer, for I see we’re being watched, and the people of this town are so hot against Bancroft, and you in particular, that they might get suspicious, and think there was something crooked doing if we talked too long.”

“Guess that’s right,” admitted Riley. “They ain’t got no love for me in Kingsbridge, ’count of our rubbing it inter them last year. Makes me laugh, the way they squealed. They were so sore they swore they’d have a team to beat us this year at any cost. That’s how you got your job; they decided to have a reg’ler manager, who could give all his time and attention to handlin’ the team. Sorry for you, Hutch, but if they beat Bancroft under the wire with the bunch they’ve scraped together, I’ll quit the game for good. So long.”

Having learned that Hutchinson was not wholly responsible for the make-up of the Kingsbridge nine, Riley did not hesitate to express himself in this manner, thus betraying the disdain in which he really held his opponents of the day.

Only once since the organization of the so-called Northern League, which really had very little organization whatever, being run, like many small, back-country “leagues,” in a loose, hit-or-miss fashion――only once had Bancroft failed to win the championship; and that year Riley, a minor leaguer before age and avoirdupois had deposited him in the can, had not handled the club.

Bancroft was a city, and it cut her fans deeply to be downed on the diamond by a smaller place, besides severely wounding in their pockets some of the sports who had wagered real money. Hence the former successful manager was called back to the job, at which he was always prepared to make good through any means available.

Kingsbridge had entered the league the previous season, filling the place of a town that, loaded with baseball debts, and discouraged by poor success, had dropped out. Owing its existence to Cyrus King, lumberman and pulp manufacturer, Kingsbridge was barely four years old, yet its inhabitants already numbered nearly five thousand.

Furthermore, it was confidently looking forward to the time, believed to be not far distant, when it should outstrip the already envious city of Bancroft, and become the “metropolis” of that particular region.

While pretending to scoff at the “mushroom village,” Bancroft was secretly disturbed and worried, fearing the day when Kingsbridge, through the enterprise of its citizens, the interest and power of its founder, and the coming of a second railroad, which was seeking a charter, would really forge to the front, and leave the “big town down the river” in the lurch. Therefore, quite naturally, the rivalry between the two places was intense in other things besides baseball.

There is nothing like the game, however, to bring to the surface the jealousies and rivalries existing between towns having contending teams; something about the game is certain to tear open old sores and stir up ancient animosities apparently long forgotten.

Especially is this true in minor leagues and “out in the bush,” where not infrequently it appears to the chance stranger that whole towns――men, women, and children――have gone baseball crazy.

It is in such places that one may see the game, as a game, at its best――and its worst. Here victory or defeat assumes a tragic importance that must seem laughable to the ordinary city fan; the former being frequently the cause of rejoicing and celebrating, sometimes with fireworks and brass bands, while the latter will cast over the community a cloud of gloom which could be equaled only by an appalling catastrophe.

This intensity of feeling and emotion may scarcely be understood by a person who has never followed with individual interest the fortunes of a backwoods team, tasting the sweet intoxication of triumph, hard earned and contested to the last ditch, or the heartbreaking bitterness of defeat and shattered hopes.