"That poor umpire got his this afternoon," he said. "With McRae on one side and Everett on the other I thought he'd be pulled to pieces."

"He was sure up against a hard proposition," agreed Joe. "The next hardest was in a play that happened when I was on the Pittston team. A fellow poled out a hit that went down like a shot between left and center. A lot of carriages were parked at the end of the field and a big coach dog ran after the ball, got it in his mouth and skipped down among the carriages where the fielders couldn't get at him. It would have doubled you up to have seen them coaxing the brute to be a good dog and give the ball up. In the meantime, the batter was tearing around the bases and made home before the ball got back."

"And how did his Umps decide it?" asked Iredell, with interest.

"He was flabbergasted for a while," replied Joe, "but he finally called it a two-base hit and let it go at that."

"An umpire's life is not a happy one," laughed Iredell. "He earns every dollar that he gets. I suppose that's what some of us fellows will be doing, too, when we begin to go back."

"It will be a good while before you come to that, Dell," Joe replied.

"You've played a rattling game at short this year, and you're a fixture with the Giants."

"I don't know about that," said the shortstop slowly. "Fixtures sometimes work loose, you know."

"It won't be so in this case," said Joe, purposely misunderstanding him.

"McRae wouldn't let go of you."

"Not if he could help it," responded Iredell.

"Well, he doesn't have to worry about that just yet," said Joe. "How long does your contract have to run?"

"A year yet," replied Iredell. "But contracts, you know, are like pie crust, they're easily broken."

"What do you mean by that?" demanded Joe sharply.

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all," said Iredell, a little nervously, as though he had said more than he intended. "But to tell the truth, Joe, I'm sore on this whole question of contracts. It's like a yoke that galls me."

"Oh, I don't know," responded Joe. "A good many folks would like to be galled that way. A good big salary, traveling on Pullmans, stopping at the best hotels, posing for pictures, and having six months of the year to ourselves. If that's a yoke, it's lined with velvet."

"But it's a yoke, just the same," persisted Iredell stubbornly. "Most men in business are free to accept any offer that's made to them. We can't. We may be offered twice as much as we're getting, but we have to stay where we are just the same."

"Well, that's simply because it's baseball," argued Joe. "You know just as well as I do that that's the only way the game can be carried on. It wouldn't last a month if players started jumping from one team to another, or from one league to another. The public would lose all interest in it, and it's the public that pays our salaries."

"Pays our salaries!" snapped Iredell. "Puts money in the hands of the owners, you mean. They get the feast and we get the crumbs. What's our measly salary compared with what they get? I was just reading in the paper that the Giants cleaned up two hundred thousand dollars this year, net profit, and yet it's the players that bring this money in at the gate."

"Yes," Joe admitted. "But they are the men who put up the capital and take the chances. Suppose they had lost two hundred thousand dollars this year.

We'd have had our salaries just the same."

Just then Burkett and Curry came along and dropped into seats beside the pair.

"h.e.l.lo, Red," greeted Joe, at the same time nodding to Burkett. "How are your ribs feeling, after that bear hug you got this afternoon?"

Curry grinned.

"That's all right," he said. "But he never touched me with the ball. And that umpire was a b.o.o.b not to give me the run."

"What were you fellows talking about so earnestly?" asked Burkett, with some curiosity.

"Oh, jug-handled things like baseball contracts," responded Iredell.

"They're the bunk all right," declared Burkett, emphatically.

"Bunk is right," said Curry.

"What's the use of quarreling with your bread and b.u.t.ter?" asked Joe good-naturedly.

"What's the use of bread and b.u.t.ter, if you can have cake and ought to have it?" Iredell came back at him.

"Cake is good," agreed Joe, "but the point is that if a man has agreed to take bread and b.u.t.ter, it's up to him to stand by his agreement. A man's word is the best thing he has, and if he is a man he'll hold to it."

"You seem to be taking a lot for granted, Joe," said Burkett, a little stiffly. "Who is talking of breaking his word? We've got a right to talk about our contracts, haven't we, when we think the owners are getting the best end of the deal?"

"Sure thing," said Joe genially. "It's every man's privilege to kick, but the time to kick is before one makes an agreement, not when kicking won't do any good."

"Maybe it can do some good," said Curry significantly.

"How so?" asked Joe innocently. "No other club in the American or National League would take us if we broke away from the Giants."

"There are other leagues," remarked Iredell.

"Surely. The minors," replied Joe, again purposely misunderstanding. "But who wants to be a busher?"

"There's the All-Star League that's just forming," suggested Burkett, with a swift look at his two companions.

"'All-Star,'" repeated Joe, a little contemptuously. "That sounds good, but where are they going to get the stars?"

"They're getting them all right," said Iredell. "The papers are full of the names of players who have jumped or are going to jump."

"You don't mean players," said Joe. "You mean traitors."

The others winced a little at this.

"'Traitors' is a pretty hard word," objected Curry.

"It's the only word," returned Joe stiffly.

"You can't call a man a traitor who simply tries to better himself,"

remarked Burkett defensively.

"Benedict Arnold tried to better himself," returned Joe. "But it didn't get him very far. The fellows that jumped, in the old Brotherhood days, thought they were going to better themselves, but they simply got in bad with the public and nearly ruined the game. This new league will promise all sorts of things, but how do you know it will keep them? What faith can you put in men who try to induce other men to be crooked?"

"Well, you know, with most men business is business, as they put it."

"I admit business is business. But so far as I am concerned, it is no business at all if it isn't on the level," answered Joe earnestly. "A great many men think they can do something that is shady and get away with it, and sometimes at first it looks as if they were right about it. But sooner or later they get tripped up and are exposed."

"Well, everybody has got a right to make a living," grumbled Curry.

"Sure he has--and I'm not denying it."