efreshments, and as he had few friends in
Marlin in 1911, he got few drinks. But when we got to Dallas cocktails
were served with the dinner and all the ball-players left them untouched,
McGraw enforcing the old rule that lips that touch "licker" shall never
moisten a spit ball for him. "Bugs" was missed after supper and some one
found him out in the kitchen licking up all the discarded Martinis. That
was the occasion of his first fine of the season, and after that, as
"Bugs" himself admitted, "life for him was just one fine after another."

At last, after the long junket through the South, on which all managers
are Simon Legrees, is ended, comes a welcome day, when the new uniforms
are donned and the band plays and "them woids" which constitute the
sweetest music to the ears of a ball-player, roll off the tongue of the
umpire:

"The batteries for to-day are Rucker and Bergen for Brooklyn, Marquard and
Meyers for New York. Play ball!"

The season is on.

XI

Jinxes and What They Mean to a Ball-Player

_A Load of Empty Barrels, Hired by John McGraw, once Pulled the
Giants out of a Losing Streak--The Child of Superstition Appears to
the Ball-Player in Many Forms--Various Ways in which the Influence of
the Jinx can be Overcome--The True Story of "Charley" Faust--The
Necktie that Helped Win a Pennant._

A friend of mine, who took a different fork in the road when we left
college from the one that I have followed, was walking down Broadway in
New York with me one morning after I had joined the Giants, and we passed
a cross-eyed man. I grabbed off my hat and spat in it. It was a new hat,
too. "What's the matter with you, Matty?" he asked, surprised.

"Spit in your hat quick and kill that jinx," I answered, not thinking for
the minute, and he followed my example.

I forgot to mention, when I said he took another fork in the road, that he
had become a pitcher, too, but of a different kind. He had turned out to
be sort of a conversational pitcher, for he was a minister, and, as luck
would have it, on the morning we met that cross-eyed man he was wearing a
silk hat. I was shocked, pained, and mortified when I saw what I had made
him do. But he was the right sort, and wanted to go through with the thing
according to the standards of the professional man with whom he happened
to be at the time.

"What's the idea?" he asked as he replaced his hat.

"Worst jinx in the world to see a cross