Keystone Kids by John R. Tunis Read Free Book Online Page A

was really a monologue.
    “Two months and a half, two months and a half we’re in front; two months and a half we have the world by the tail, and then bang! Something hits you. Or you fall down a manhole and everyone cracks you over the head with the lid. First we lose O’Toole, then Greene, and then Davis and...”
    “D’you think we could...” Draper was trying to be helpful, but Crane would have none of it.
    “When you’re in the spot we’re in, you don’t think. You’re too bewildered to think. You can only feel. After a while everything is a great big headache.”
    But Draper persisted. “I still think it would help if we could...”
    “Nothing helps,” interrupted the manager. Before the team, on the field or the bench, he had to be confident and cool. In his own room with only his coaches around he could say what he thought, he could really let go, and he was taking advantage of this.
    “Nothing helps when you’re floundering around the way we are, dropping games left and right. It’s strange how helpless a guy feels. Nothing breaks right for you. Sometimes you think you or the world has gone crazy. I swear to heaven, Charlie, I don’t know whether to tell the boys to go out and get good and stiff tonight to loosen them up, or ride herd on them harder and harder. I don’t know what I should do. I’m so damn tired myself I can’t even see straight.”
    He slumped into a chair. There was a moment of silence over the room.
    “Shoot! What have the Pirates got that we haven’t got?”
    “Only first place,” remarked Draper sagely.
    For once Crane didn’t come back at him as he usually did. To disagree with the peppery manager was usually to bring down a torrent of words on your head.
    “Here’s how I see things, Ginger.” Draper didn’t pause between sentences for fear of an interruption. “The team’s numb, no use talking. When you came off the field they lost something, a spark if you like... well, something in there to fuse ’em. To set ’em moving, to get the rallies started in the tight games. It’s the tight ones we’ve been losing. Now this Spike Russell is a dandy fielder with a fine pair of hands, and he’s getting a piece of the ball, too. But he’s certainly no sparkplug.”
    “So what? You want me to go back in there with these feet of mine, and that boy fielding well and hitting over .300?”
    “Nope. I want you to let the kid take over.”
    “The kid. You mean Spike?”
    “No, I don’t. I mean his brother.”
    “His brother! The youngster?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Why, he’s... he’s... I don’t believe that boy has started to shave yet. And he’s only had four games in the majors since we put him in for Davis last week.”
    “Makes no never-mind. Take my word for it, he’s a natural. That lad’s a holler guy. It comes to him naturally, and he isn’t scared by these older men, either. Yesterday when Street missed that hit to his left the boy shouts, ‘Get off that dime, Harry, get off that dime and move around there.’ Then he goes way to his right and makes that one-handed catch of Maguire’s liner. Give him the word and he’ll go to town.”
    “Right, Charlie.” Cassidy spoke up. “I’d agree to all that. Baseball isn’t just a game to this kid, it’s life. Why, he’s a new person since he got in there. He isn’t a pop-off guy like Razzle, but he has that same aggressiveness. He’s pepper; it stands out all over him, and he’s a mighty tough loser. Believe me, when he gets on base that lad is a spike-flying dervish. I watched him close yesterday.”
    “Well, we’ve tried about every combination except pitching the bat-boy, so we might as well try this, too,” remarked the manager. “O.K., let’s see what he’ll do. Come on, boys, time to be moving.”
    It was just before game time that afternoon when the manager took Bob aside. “Russell, I want you to do something out there from now on. This team needs a punch in the jaw. I want