``Yes, Carroll, I got my notice.Maybe it's no surprise to you.And there's one more thing I want to say.You're `it' on this team.You're the topnotch catcher in the Western League and one of the best ball players in the game--but you're a knocker!''
Madge Ellston heard young Sheldon speak.
She saw the flash in his gray eyes and the heat of his bronzed face as he looked intently at the big catcher.
``Fade away, sonny.Back to the bush-league for yours!'' replied Carroll, derisively.``You're not fast enough for Kansas City.You look pretty good in a uniform and you're swift on your feet, but you can't hit.You've got a glass arm and you run bases like an ostrich trying to side.That notice was coming to you.Go learn the game!''
Then a crowd of players trooped noisily out of the hotel lobby and swept Sheldon and Carroll down the porch steps toward the waiting omnibus.
Madge's uncle owned the Kansas City club.
She had lived most of her nineteen years in a baseball atmosphere, but accustomed as she was to baseball talk and the peculiar banterings and bickerings of the players, there were times when it seemed all Greek.If a player got his ``notice''
it meant he would be released in ten days.A``knocker'' was a ball player who spoke ill of his fellow players.This scrap of conversation, however, had an unusual interest because Carroll had paid court to her for a year, and Sheldon, coming to the team that spring, had fallen desperately in love with her.She liked Sheldon pretty well, but Carroll fascinated her.She began to wonder if there were bad feelings between the rivals--to compare them--to get away from herself and judge them impersonally.
When Pat Donahue, the veteran manager of the team came out, Madge greeted him with a smile.She had always gotten on famously with Pat, notwithstanding her imperious desire to handle the managerial reins herself upon occasions.
Pat beamed all over his round ruddy face.
``Miss Madge, you weren't to the park yesterday an' we lost without our pretty mascot.We shure needed you.Denver's playin' at a fast clip.''
``I'm coming out today,'' replied Miss Ellston, thoughtfully.``Pat, what's a knocker?''
``Now, Miss Madge, are you askin' me that after I've been coachin' you in baseball for years?'' questioned Pat, in distress.
``I know what a knocker is, as everybody else does.But I want to know the real meaning, the inside-ball of it, to use your favorite saying.''
Studying her grave face with shrewd eyes Donahue slowly lost his smile.
``The inside-ball of it, eh? Come, let's sit over here a bit--the sun's shure warm today....
Miss Madge, a knocker is the strangest man known in the game, the hardest to deal with an'
what every baseball manager hates most.''
Donahue told her that he believed the term ``knocker'' came originally from baseball; that in general it typified the player who strengthened his own standing by belittling the ability of his team-mates, and by enlarging upon his own superior qualities.But there were many phases of this peculiar type.Some players were natural born knockers; others acquired the name in their later years in the game when younger men threatened to win their places.Some of the best players ever produced by baseball had the habit in its most violent form.There were players of ridiculously poor ability who held their jobs on the strength of this one trait.It was a mystery how they misled magnates and managers alike; how for months they held their places, weakening a team, often keeping a good team down in the race; all from sheer bold suggestion of their own worth and other players' worthlessness.
Strangest of all was the knockers' power to disorganize; to engender a bad spirit between management and team and among the players.
The team which was without one of the parasites of the game generally stood well up in the race for the pennant, though there had been championship teams noted for great knockers as well as great players.
``It's shure strange, Miss Madge,'' said Pat in conclusion, shaking his gray head.``I've played hundreds of knockers, an' released them, too.
Knockers always get it in the end, but they go on foolin' me and workin' me just the same as if Iwas a youngster with my first team.They're part an' parcel of the game.''
``Do you like these men off the field--outside of baseball, I mean?''
``No, I shure don't, an' I never seen one yet that wasn't the same off the field as he was on.''
``Thank you, Pat.I think I understand now.
And--oh, yes, there's another thing I want to ask you.What's the matter with Billie Sheldon?
Uncle George said he was falling off in his game.
Then I've read the papers.Billie started out well in the spring.''
``Didn't he? I was sure thinkin' I had a find in Billie.Well, he's lost his nerve.He's in a bad slump.It's worried me for days.I'm goin'
to release Billie.The team needs a shake-up.
That's where Billie gets the worst of it, for he's really the makin' of a star; but he's slumped, an'
now knockin' has made him let down.There, Miss Madge, that's an example of what I've just been tellin' you.An' you can see that a manager has his troubles.These hulkin' athletes are a lot of spoiled babies an' I often get sick of my job.''
That afternoon Miss Ellston was in a brown study all the way out to the baseball park.She arrived rather earlier than usual to find the grand-stand empty.The Denver team had just come upon the field, and the Kansas City players were practising batting at the left of the diamond.
Madge walked down the aisle of the grand stand and out along the reporters' boxes.She asked one of the youngsters on the field to tell Mr.
Sheldon that she would like to speak with him a moment.
Billie eagerly hurried from the players' bench with a look of surprise and expectancy on his sun-tanned face.Madge experienced for the first time a sudden sense of shyness at his coming.His lithe form and his nimble step somehow gave her a pleasure that seemed old yet was new.