CHAPTER XVII

THE UNAPPROACHABLE LOCKE

“Men go stale on college teams,” said Charles Collier apologetically. “Perhaps that’s the trouble with Locke.”

“He ain’t stale,” asserted Carson. “That ain’t the trouble with him. Look how he pitched when he wanted to.”

“He seemed very erratic to me,” put in Parlmee. “I’ve seen plenty of pitchers like him. They’re never to be depended on.”

“But you haven’t seen him at his best,” said the club owner. “This is the first full game you’ve ever seen him pitch. He certainly was reliable enough earlier in the season.”

“The only trouble with him is in that swelled bean of his,” declared Carson. “Under Kennedy he was petted and coddled and made to believe he was the real thing, spelled with capitals. As soon as he gets the same deal from me that every other man is getting, and is handled on his merits, he turns ugly.”

“I suppose,” observed Collier, “he has an idea that you rate Grist at the top of the list.”

“Well, why shouldn’t I? Look at Grist’s record and experience. There’s more baseball in his little finger than this cub has learned yet. If we’d had old Peter on the mound to-day――”

“Why didn’t you put him in when you saw the youngster wabbling?”

“Put him in, and then have it said I gave Locke the hook without reason? Who could foresee the fellow was going to throw the game at the last minute? I know he threatened to blow up several times, but he always tightened. Two were gone when he let Murray steal home. Even then there’d been a chance, for I might have run in another man; but he followed his dumbness up with a fool heave to the left-field bleachers. There wasn’t a bit of sense in it, and, unless he was trying to pass over the game, I can’t understand why he did it.”

“It was the silliest thing I ever saw a pitcher do,” asserted Franklin Parlmee.

“I admit that it was crazy,” agreed Collier. “But he can pitch, and we need the best that’s in our twirling staff in order to keep first place this year. The loss of a single pitcher would be pretty sure to fix us now. You’ve got to use sober judgment, Carson, if you land the championship, and doing that means something to you, as well as myself. The old burg will support a winning team and make it a money-maker, but it hasn’t much stomach for losers.”

“You can bank on it, Mr. Collier,” said Carson, “that I’m going to do my level best to land on top. I’m not in the game, any more than you are, for the fun there is in it. If you hadn’t reckoned I knew my business, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

“Surely not,” agreed the owner. “Kennedy did a good turn last season, and I’d not thought of displacing him if he’d shown an ability to keep the bunch united. Jealousy and cliques on a ball team always put it to the bad. It’s up to you to smooth things out, and I’m afraid you’re not succeeding. But for internal troubles, the Blue Stockings’ lead now would make it practically impossible for the Specters or any other team to head ’em.”

Al Carson was not at all pleased by the criticism of his employer, but he had sufficient good sense to repress open resentment. He made the plea that he should be given time to “smooth out the wrinkles.”

“If I’m going to be given full swing,” he said, “I think I should have it. I let Locke go the limit to-day because of criticism in my handling of him. Give me the proper rope, Mr. Collier, and I’ll deliver the goods; but no manager can do that unless he’s unhampered.”

“It has never been my intention to interfere in a way to hamper you,” returned Collier a bit tartly. “Naturally, I presume I have the right to talk things over with you.”

Half apologetically Carson hastened to state that it was not his intention to question that point.

“Leave me to handle this grouchy man,” he promised, “and I’ll bring him into harness. I know we need him to do a certain amount of pitching, but he’s got to understand that there’s such a thing as discipline. He ought to know he can’t be sassy to his manager.”

While this talk was in progress Lefty’s teammates, starting for their hotel in a motor bus, wondered what had become of him. It was Rufe Hyland who announced that he had seen Locke taking a trolley car all by himself.

“S’pose he feels rotten,” said Rufe, “and so he sneaked.”

“There was something doing ’tween him and the old man,” said Kid Lewis. “Carson called him for a private confab, and I heard sounds of fireworks.”

“It’s a shame,” said Laughing Larry, looking strangely doleful, “a beastly shame he had that spasm in the ninth.”

“Spasm?” growled Herman Brock. “Looked to me more like a trance. What ailed him, anyhow?”

“What’s been ailing him for some days?” questioned Jack Daly. “He don’t eat, and I happen to know he ain’t sleeping well.”

Dalton knew this also, although he had said nothing about it. Suddenly, to the surprise of the others, Grist, who had taken no part in the conversation, spoke up.

“The boy must be off his feed,” said Pete. “Any youngster is apt to have a slump. Give him time and he’ll come round.”

Now this was particularly generous of Grist, who at other times, with Lefty going at his best, had shown a disposition to belittle the southpaw’s fine work. Promptly Dalton’s heart warmed toward the old veteran.

“You’re right, Pete,” he said, “and mebbe you’re the very one to put him back on his pins.”

“Me?” grunted Grist.

“Yes, you.”

“How y’ mean?”

“By talking to him. By encouraging him.”

“Huh!” grunted the old twirler. “He wouldn’t listen to me.”

“I believe he would, Pete. Lefty’s a ripping fine fellow when he’s right――the finest ever. He’s generous and whole-souled, without a touch of jealousy in his make-up. All of a sudden he’s gone wrong, and nobody can account for it. His particular friends can’t talk to him. They’ve tried.”

“Then I dunno why I should waste my breath,” said Grist slowly. “Likely he’d jump on me and sink his spikes to the sole leather.”

“I don’t believe it,” protested Larry earnestly. “He acts like he’d somehow got a fool notion that everybody’s sore on him. Now, if he saw that you didn’t feel that way――”

“All right,” snapped Grist shortly. “Leave it to me; I’ll talk to him like a father to a wayward son.”

“But be careful,” cautioned Dalton. “Handle him right.”

“Leave it to me, I tell yer,” advised Grist once more.

That night Lefty ate alone at the hotel, shunning his teammates. He picked at his food like a man insulting his appetite, if he had one. When he left the dining room and walked out through the lobby without looking to the right or left, Grist followed him.

Ten minutes later Grant, Hyland, and Dalton, chatting in a front window, were startled to see old Peter appear before them, his face the picture of anger and disgust.

“Say,” snorted the veteran twirler, “when anybody gets me to try anything like that again he’ll know it. Why, that dub would slap his grandmother’s face if she peeped to him. I overtook him by chance on the street and tried to talk decent. What did I get? He seemed to think I was trying to rub something into him, and I couldn’t argue it out of his dumb noddle. The more I said the dirtier he got. I just had to give it up and quit sudden before I forgot myself and handed him a bunch of fives. Anybody that wants to talk to him hereafter can do so. _Excuse me!_”

“He wouldn’t listen?” asked Dalton in deep disappointment. “Did you make him understand that your motives were friendly?”

“Dunno. I tried hard enough. ’Twan’t no good. If anybody else’d met me that way, I’d soaked him. Now I’m done with Lefty Locke.”