ktie was
to be worn with the street clothes and concealed in the uniform, if that
necktie could be concealed anywhere. It would have done for a headlight
and made Joseph's coat of many colors look like a mourning garment.

"Might as well wish good luck to a guy on the way to the morgue," murmured
Ames as he surveyed the layout, but he manfully put on the necktie, taking
his first dose of the prescription, as directed, at once, and he tucked
the four-leaf clover away carefully in his wallet.

"You've got your work cut out for you, old boy," he remarked to the charm
as he put it away, "but I'd wear you if you were a horseshoe."

The first day that Ames pitched in Boston he won, and won in a stroll.

"The necktie," he explained that night at dinner, and pointed to the
three-sheet, colored-supplement affair he was wearing around his collar,
"I don't change her until I lose."

_And he didn't lose a game on that trip._ Once he almost did, when he was
taken out in the sixth inning, and a batter put in for him, but the Giants
finally pulled out the victory and he got the credit for it. He swept
through the West unbeatable, letting down Pittsburg with two or three
hits, cleaning up in St. Louis, and finally breaking our losing streak in
Chicago after two games had gone against us. And all the time he wore that
spectrum around his collar for a necktie. As it frayed with the wear and
tear, more colors began to show, although I didn't think it possible. If
he had had occasion to put on his evening clothes, I believe that tie
would have gone with it.

For my part, I would almost rather have lost a game and changed the
necktie, since it gave one the feeling all the time that he was carrying
it around with him because he had had the wrong end of an election bet, or
something of the sort. But not Ames! He was a game guy. He stuck with the
necktie, and it stuck with him, and the combination kept right on winning
ball games. Maybe he didn't mind it because he could not see it himself,
unless he looked in a mirror, but it was rough on the rest of the team,
except that we needed the games the necktie won, to take the pennant.

Columns were printed in the newspapers about that necktie, and it became
the most famous scarf in the world. Ames used to sleep with it under his
pillow alongside of his bank roll, and he didn't lose another game until
the very end of the season, when he dropped one against Brooklyn.

"I don't hardly lay that