The Forest Monster of Oz Part 15

"'Well,' I'd answer. 'You see policemen with uniforms on, and other people like that. They change after they're through working. It's the same way with ballplayers.'"

"That sounds reasonable to me," said Tweaty.

"Me, too," said Queen Ozma. "I certainly don't wear the same clothes to a meeting with a foreign dignitary as I would wear while playing marbles with Jellia Jamb."

"Certainly not!" agreed Nibbles.

"If only my father had thought that way," sighed Rube's shadow. "But he just scoffed. 'Do ballplayers get paid?' he'd ask.

"'Yes,' I told him. 'They get paid.'

"'I don't believe it!' he would rant.

"And 'round and 'round we would go. We'd actually have that same argument, almost always word-for-word, at least once a week. Twice a week in the summer. Sometimes my grandfather--my father's father--would get involved in it. My grandfather was a nice man who liked baseball, and he would usually take my side.

"'Listen,' he'd say to my father, 'when you were a youngster, I wanted you to be something, too. I wanted you to be a stonecutter, same as I was when I came over from the old country.' Oh, did I mention before that my grandfather was a stonecutter?"

"No," replied Elephant. "You just said that he was a nice man who liked baseball."

"Okay," said Rube's shadow. "Well, my grandfather had been a stonecutter, and had tried to persuade Dad to become one, too. 'But no!'

he would say loudly into my father's ear, 'You wouldn't listen. You wanted to be an engineer. So you _became_ an engineer. And a darned good one, too. Had I forced you into masonry, you would never have excelled in the craft for which you had no love. And you would have been very unhappy. Now Richard wants to be a baseball player. He's so determined that nothing is going to stop him. Let's give him a chance and see what he can do. Don't force the boy to give up on his dreams.'"

"Your grandfather sounds like a wise man to me," said Ozma.

"He was," said the shadow. "But Dad would never listen. 'Ballplayers are no good,' he'd insist. 'Ballplayers are no good, and they never will be any good.' It was very frustrating. He would usually end the argument by slamming the door and going outside to sit on the porch. And he would stop speaking to my grandfather or me for hours at a time."

"That's too bad," said Tweaty. "If you were good at baseball, you should have stuck with it."

"But I did stick with it," replied the shadow. "I told you, I just came from a game."

"Oh, yeah," said Tweaty. "So you mean you brought your Dad around?"

"Well," the shadow said slowly. "The thing is, I was always very tall for my age. I had three brothers and a sister, and my sister was the shortest of the five of us. She grew to be six feet two. So you see, I was constantly hanging around the older kids and playing ball with them instead of hanging with kids my own age. When I was about thirteen or so, I used to carry bats for some of the Cleveland Indians, such as Elmer Flick, Napoleon Lajoie and Terry Turner. Of course, they were not called the Cleveland Indians then. They were called the Cleveland Bronchos in those days. Then the Cleveland Naps--after Napoleon Lajoie.

Anyway, after the regular season was over, a lot of them would barnstorm around the Cleveland area, and sometimes I'd be their bat boy.

"Later on, I even pitched a few games for Bill Bradley's Boo Gang," the shadow added proudly.

"Boo Gang?" said Lisa with a little shudder.

"Boo like a Ghost?" added Hootsey.

"No, no," laughed Rube's image. "Bill Bradley was the third baseman for the Cleveland Indians--and one of the greatest who ever lived--and he also barnstormed with his 'Boo Gang' after the season was over. So by the time I was fifteen or so, I knew a lot of ballplayers. And I had my heart set on being a Big Leaguer myself.

"Well, one of my best friends was a catcher named Howard Wakefield. He was about five years older than I was. In 1906 he was playing for the Waterloo Club in the Iowa State League, and ..."

"1906?" echoed Lisa. "But ... But ..."

"What's wrong?" asked the ballplayer's shadow.

"You have to be mistaken," said Elephant, recognizing the reason for his friend's perplexity. "It isn't 1906 yet. It's only 1902!"

"I think he's from the future," said Lisa. "Rube Marquard is from a year that hasn't happened yet."

"But how is that possible?" asked Hootsey.

"Have you ever noticed," explained the shadow, "how you can stand in the middle of two or more different sources of light, and cast several shadows in various directions?"

"Of course," said Hootsey. "And sometimes I have a long skinny shadow that is faint and grayish, while I also have a short fat shadow right under me which is almost completely black. And when I'm flying, I can make lots of different shadows that don't even touch me anywhere."

"Yes," said Rube. "And these are all your shadow. If you go on a stage with many footlights, you will cast various images of various shades of gray. These are all your shadow. You see, your shadow can go in any direction, backward or forward. It can reach to a distant area or stay situated close by. And it can do all at one time without ever letting go of you--even if, as you say, it isn't actually touching you. You are always attached at some place. As the shadow of Rube Marquard, I touch him always, even while he is far away in repose. I can be his past, his future, or his mirror image. That is why I can remember experiences he hasn't even had yet. Sometimes we shadows accidentally create a feeling of deja vu in our live counterparts, which can lead to a false sense of psychic ability."

"I don't know much about American sports figures," said Elephant. "But it sounds like you are someone who is or will be important to Baseball.

But how did you convince your dad to let you play?"

"Yes," agreed Hootsey. "You still haven't told us."

"Of course," replied the shadow. "As I was saying, I had a friend by the name of Howard Wakefield. He was playing for the Waterloo Club in the Iowa State League. That summer--when I was only sixteen--I got a letter from him.

"'_We can use a good left-handed pitcher_,' the letter said. '_And if you want to come to Waterloo, I'll recommend you to the manager._' I think Howard thought that I was at least eighteen or nineteen, as I was so big for my age.

"I wrote Howard and told him that my dad did not want me to play ball, so I didn't think he'd give me the money to go. If I asked him, he'd probably hit the ceiling and rap me over the head with something. Aside from that, I was ready to go."

"Well," said Lisa indignantly, "a good father would have encouraged you to go. He should have been able to see that you were good at what you did, and that you deserved this chance to make good."

"Absolutely," agreed Hootsey. "But I don't expect that your father gave you the money. Did you ever get to Waterloo?"

"Well," answered the shadow, "pretty soon I got a telegram from the Waterloo manager. He said that I had been recommended very highly by Howard Wakefield, and asked if I would like to come and try out for the team. The Waterloo manager offered to reimburse the cost of transportation if I was given a contract."

"But you still couldn't get the money from your father," said Ozma.

"No," sighed the ballplayer. "It was hardly an improvement over Howard's letter. So I just went upstairs to my room and closed the door. Then I wrote back a long letter to the Waterloo manager, explaining that I didn't have any money for transportation. But I told him that, if he sent me an advance right now for transportation, I'd be on the very next train to Waterloo and he could take it out of my salary later on."

"That's a.s.suming you were hired, of course," said Lisa.

"Yes," agreed Rube. "But I didn't have the slightest doubt that I would make good. And, of course, I didn't mention that I was only sixteen years old. I thought it best to leave that out.

"I mailed the letter to Iowa, and then I waited on pins and needles for an answer. Every day I had to be the first one to get at the mail, because if anyone else saw a letter to me from the Waterloo Ball Club--well, that would have been enough to alert Dad to what was going on and I'd have been sunk. So every day I waited for the first sign of the mailman and tried to get to him before he reached the house. As it turned out, I could have saved myself a lot of worrying."

"No letter ever came?" guessed Lisa.

"Nope. Three weeks pa.s.sed and still no answer." The shadow sighed again.

"I couldn't understand what had gone wrong. Maybe it was against the rules to send transportation money to somebody not yet under contract?

Maybe they didn't know how good I really was? Maybe this and maybe that.

It was another frustrating period of my life. Finally, I just couldn't stand it any longer. I gave my folks a story about camping with the Boy Scouts and hitch-hiked to Waterloo."

"You lied to your parents?" said Ozma, startled by the very idea.

"Yes, I did. It was a hard thing for me to do, going against Dad like that. But I was well punished for the deed. Believe me! Have you ever had to hitch-hike, sleep in open fields, or hop a freight train? It took me five days and five nights. The longest five days of my life, and I was only sixteen at the time. But I did get there. Tired, anxious and half-starved, I blew into the Illinois Central Station at Waterloo, Iowa on a freight train early in the evening. Just before it stopped, I jumped off and went head over heels right in front of the pa.s.senger house. I hardly had time to pick myself up off the ground before the stationmaster grabbed me and shouted, 'What do you think you're doing?