Ralph Barbour - The Lucky Seventh

“Well, get out your pencil, Gordie, and let’s make up the team. Haley, pitch, and Lanny, catcher – ”

“I’ll play first and Harry Bryan second – ”

“How about Will Scott?”

“Third. Then for shortstop – ”

“Jack Tappen?”

“N-no, he’d better play in the outfield. I’ll put him down for right. I guess Pete Robey’s the chap for short. That leaves us Way for left field and I guess Fudge will do for center. He can’t hit much, but he can pull down a fly.”

“There you are, then. What will you call the nine? You can’t be the High School team, I suppose.”

“N-no, we’ll have to find a name. The Clearfield – what, Dickums?”

“Rovers?”

“Sounds like a troupe of trained dogs,” laughed Gordon. “We might call ourselves the Purple Sox, only it’s sort of hard to say.”

“Shorten it,” suggested Dick. “Call yourselves the ‘Purps.’”

“That’s worse than the Rovers! Why not just the Clearfield Ball Club?”

“Why not? That’s settled. Now you want a manager – ”

“Got one.”

“You have? Who?”

“You.”

“Me!”

“Surest thing you know. That’s partly why I came. To tell you. You see, I thought you’d want to know it.”

“Very thoughtful of you,” Dick laughed. “But will you tell me how I can manage a ball team, you idiot?”

“Why can’t you? All you have to do is to arrange games for us and look after the expenses and see that we behave ourselves. If they make me captain – ”

“Which they will, as it’s your scheme!”

“It’s really Bert’s. But if they do I’m going to tell the other fellows that they’ve got to do just as you say. You know more baseball than I do and you’re going to be the real thing.”

“Nonsense!”

“No nonsense about it. That’s settled, then.”

“But, look here, I’d have to go to places with you and – and – well, you know, Gordie, I can’t afford to do that very often.”

“It won’t cost you anything. Your expenses will be paid by the club. Besides, we’ll only go over to the Point and places like that, I guess. Now I’m going to see Lanny and talk it over with him.”

“Well, all right. I’ll be manager if you really want me to. I’d like it. Only, if you change your mind, or the other fellows think – ”

“You know very well the other fellows will be tickled to death,” replied Gordon severely. “And it will be a good thing for you, too. Take you off this porch now and then. You don’t get enough sunshine and fresh air.”

“Considering that I’m outdoors all day and sleep with my head through the window,” laughed Dick, “that’s a bit of a joke. But have your own way, Gordie. You always were a masterful brute. Going?”

“Yep. I want to catch Lanny. I’ll come over again after dinner. Rah for the Clearfield Ball Club, Dickums! So long!”

“The only th-thing is,” said Fudge, “it’s going to co-cost a heap, isn’t it?”

Fudge, whose real name was William Shaw, was fifteen years of age, had sandy-red hair and blue eyes and was short of stature and round of body. His habitual expression was one of pleased surprise, due probably to the fact that his blue eyes were very blue and very big. When Fudge was the least bit excited he stammered, but the habit was too slight to be an affliction, and his friends sometimes got Fudge upset in order to enjoy his facial contortions when the word wouldn’t come promptly. It was Lansing White who, several years before in grammar school, had dubbed him Fudge. Lanny declared that “pshaw” and “fudge” meant the same thing and that “fudge” was more novel. At the present moment Fudge was seated in the apple tree which grew by the fence where the Shaws’ side-yard and the Merricks’ back-yard came together. It was a favorite retreat with Fudge, and he had built a shelf handy to the comfortable crotch he affected on which to place books and papers when, as was customary, he was studying his lessons there. To-day, however, as school was over for the summer, there were no books about and the shelf bore, instead, a tennis racket which Fudge had been mending when Gordon found him.

“I don’t see why,” replied Gordon, leaning his arms on the top of the fence. “We’ve all got our High School uniforms and we’ve all got bats and mitts and things. All we’d need to spend money on would be balls, I guess. Of course, when we went away every fellow would have to pay his transportation.”

“M-meaning carfare?” queried Fudge. “Say, it’s a peach of a scheme, Gordie! I wish I could bat better, though. Maybe I’ll get on to it, eh? I guess what I need is practice.” And Fudge, swinging an imaginary bat at an invisible ball, almost fell off the branch. “Who’s going to be captain?” he asked when he had recovered his equilibrium.

“We’ll vote, I suppose,” replied Gordon.

Fudge grinned. “Then it’ll be me. I’m awfully popular. Have you told Lanny yet?”

“Yes, and he says if you play center there’s got to be a rule that a hit to center field is good for only three bases.”

Fudge snorted indignantly. “If he ever hit a ball as far as the outfield he’d fall in a faint! When do we start?”

“I’ve got to see the other fellows yet. Harry is working in his father’s store and I don’t know whether his dad will let him play.”

“That’s so. We need him, too. He’s a peach of a baseman. Who’s going to play short?”

“I want Pete Robey to,” replied Gordon doubtfully. “Think he’d do, Fudge?”

“We-ell, Pete isn’t so much of a muchness. Why don’t you p-put him in center and let me play short?”

“Because a fellow has to have brains to play in the infield, Fudge, and – ”

Fudge tried to reach him with the racket, failed and, composing his features to an expression of grave interest, asked: “Won’t it be awfully hard to find anyone to play first?”

Gordon smiled. “Never you mind about first. Get your wheel and let’s go around and see some of the fellows. We can catch Harry at the store if we hurry. I want to see Tom, too. If he won’t go into it and pitch for us we might as well give it up.”

“Oh, Tom’ll pitch all right,” answered Fudge, dropping from the tree, racket in hand. “He’d rather pitch a baseball than eat. I’ll meet you out front in two minutes.”

He wormed his way through the currant bushes to the garden path and disappeared toward the house, while Gordon, dodging the clothes lines strung near the rear fence, went along the brick walk and gained the side porch by the simple expedient of vaulting the railing. The Merrick house was new – most of the residences on that end of Troutman Street were – and was mildly pretentious. Mr. Merrick was a lawyer and comfortably well-to-do. The family had lived in Clearfield for six generations and had given its name to one of the principal streets in the downtown business part of the city. I refer to Clearfield as a city, and it really was, but it was not a very large city. The latest census credited it with something over 17,000 inhabitants. Like many New England cities of its kind, it owed its growth and prosperity to factories of various sorts. Mill River, which entered the bay two miles distant, flowed along the edge of the town and provided water-power for a number of large manufacturing plants, knitting mills, a sewing machine factory, a silverware factory and several others.

The knitting mills were largely owned by Mr. Brent, the Honorable Jonathan Brent, as the Clearfield Reporter usually referred to him, and while Gordon had spoken of Mr. Brent “owning the town,” he had, of course, exaggerated, but still had not been very far wide of the mark. Mr. Brent was Clearfield’s richest and its leading citizen. Besides the knitting mills he controlled two banks and the street railway and lighting service and had a finger – usually two or three fingers – in many other enterprises. The Brent residence, standing imposingly in a whole block of land, was visible, further along Troutman Street, from the Merricks’ porch. In this, the more recently developed part of the town, the wide streets were lined with maples as yet too young to afford much shade, but a giant elm tree, which had been old long before Clearfield even thought of growing away from the river, stood just inside the Merricks’ front gate and effectively screened the house from the hot sunlight.