"
"Good for you, Rube!" said Elephant, genuinely proud of his new friend.
"The next year--that would have been 1908--I went to Spring Training
with the Indianapolis Club. We went to French Lick Springs, Indiana.
After three weeks there we went back to Indianapolis and played a few
exhibition games before the season opened. Well, believe it or not, the
first club to come in for an exhibition game was the Cleveland team:
Napoleon Lajoie, Terry Turner, Elmer Flick, George Stovall and the whole
bunch that I used to carry bats for. When they came on the field I was
already warming up.
"'Hey!' a couple of them yelled at me. 'What are you doing here? Are you
the bat boy here?'
"'No,' I smugly replied. 'I am the pitcher.'
"'You, a pitcher?' they jeered. 'Who do you think you're kidding?'
"'Just ask Bill Bradley,' I told them. 'He was there when I signed my
first contract. You'll see. I'm going to pitch against you guys today,
and I'm going to beat you, too.'
"'Beat us? Busher, you couldn't beat a drum!'
"So then Bill Bradley came over and said hello. As he was leaving he
said, 'Richard, you're a nice boy, so I want to give you some advice
before today's game. Be careful of the Frenchman.
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