Argosy, Vol. 119, No. 2 — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

IT wasn’t sure. ~ Make up my mind. HE WHO HESITATES IS BOSSED. The blow fell shortly after Ina and I were married.. It was a lucky thing for Ina that I didn’t know it was going to hap- pen. If I’d known it I wouldn't ’a’ dared take the chance, you see. But I thought my future was assured for quite a few years anyway, and so I went ahead and married her. might know — the crash came. The old salary-wing went dead on me. About fil- teen specialists all said the same thing— and nicked me for a young fortune for say- ing it: I’d never be any good any more. I’d pitched my last game of baseball. And me just married! But I’ve got to hand it to Dave McBur- ney. McBurney was manager of the Pink Sox then,and he certainly treated me white. At that, when you’ve given a team the best that’s in you for seven years, no doubt you've got something coming. scala I stayed with the club. It was Ina that put the bee in my bon- -net—the managership bee. Of course we'd been doing a lot of worrying about where we were going from here—and somehow I couldn’t make up my mind what to-do. All I knew was that it was certainly a tough old world, and that the future surely looked black—blacker than Jack Johnson. Then we heard that McBurney was go- ‘ing to quit the club at the end of the sea- son—and Ina was off to a good start. She said that I knew as much “baseball as the best of ’em, and that I had all the neces- ‘sary qualifications for a first-class manager, and it was up to me to take my foot in my hand and whirl in and land that manager job. Well, I agreed with her—partly. ‘When it came to knowledge of the old pas- time I wouldn’t concede an inch to any- body; but—well, to tell the truth, I didn’t know. There’s a lot of things that a fel- low’s got to have to make a good baseball manager, and I wasn’t sure that I had ’em. And_.even if I did have ’em, I wasn’t sure that I wanted the job of managing the Pink Sox—provided I could get it. Look- ing at it some ways I thought maybe I’d like the job; and then again, looking at it other ways, I thought maybe I wouldn't. And I -couldn’t seem to And then — of course you » 233 But I might just as well ’a’ saved my- self a lot of wear and tear on the old brain about whether to try for that manager job or not, because Ina was strong for it in the first place. and she kept getting stronger for it right along; and so in the end, of course, that settled it. A little while after the clese of that season I went to the mag- -nate—Alonzo J. Brown, owner of the club, you understand—and spoke my little piece. I told him I’d heard that McBurney was quitting, and so of course he’d be look- ing for another manager, and if it was all the same to him I’d like the job; and be- lieve me, I’d positively guarantee satisfac- tion—you understand; Ina had told me to make it strong. And I told him how he knew I’d been giving the team the very | best I had for seven years, and—and, well, ‘how about it? Well, Alonzo seemed to have some kind of throat trouble that morning, because, anyway, he had to clear it several times before he was able to speak—and then he asked me to have a cigar. While I was lighting it something in the street seemed to attract this attention, and he spent a minute or two on the inside looking out— saying nothing. Then he went to his desk and sat down, and, ‘Listen, Jim,” says he. “It’s like this: the club owes you something—I admit that -——and I’m not the sort of man to side-step a debt of that kind. But about giving you the managership—well, frankly, I can’t say, not at this time, anyway. But get this: don’t you: worry. You’ve got it com- ing, and I'll see that you’re taken care of. And that’s the best I can say now.” And that’s all the satisfaction I got. Alonzo J. Brown threw the wholt thing up in the air ‘and left it there—except, of course, that I knew now that I was going to be taken care of, as the magnate said, and that helped some. When [I told Ina what Alonzo had said, she was dead sure that I-was going to land the job. I told her not to go and get her hopes set too high, because if she. did she was. liable to be disappointed. But of course what I said didn’t make any differ- ence. She went right ahead seeing me as manager of the Pink Sox, and all covered Eomicbooks.co m =| 1 2