"Say," said McGraw to "Tacks" Ashenbach the next time the club was in Cincinnati, "there are two things I want to ask you. First, why does that 'rat-a-tat-tat' thing get under Coveleski's skin so badly, and, second, why didn't you mention it to us when he was beating the club out of a championship last fall?" "Never thought of it," asserted Ashenbach. "Just chanced to be telling stories one day last winter about the old times in the Tri-State, when that weakness of Coveleski's happened to pop into my mind. Thought maybe he was cured." "Cured!" echoed McGraw. "Only way he could be cured of that is to poison him. But tip me. Why is it?" "Well, this is the way I heard it," answered Ashenbach. "When he was a coal miner back in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, he got stuck on some Jane who was very fond of music. Everybody who was any one played in the Silver Cornet Band down in Melodeon Hall on Thursday nights. The girl told Coveleski that she couldn't see him with an X-ray unless he broke into the band. "'But I can't play any instrument,' said the Pole. "'Well, get busy and learn, and don't show around here until you have,' answered the girl. "Now Coveleski had no talent for music, so he picked out the snare drum as his victim and started practising regularly, getting some instruction from the local bandmaster. After he had driven all the neighbors pretty nearly crazy, the bandmaster said he would give him a show at the big annual concert, when he tried to get all the pieces in his outfit that he could. Things went all right until it was time for Coveleski to come along with a little bit on the snare drum, and then he was nowhere in the neighborhood. He didn't even swing at it. But later, when the leader waved for a solo from the fiddle, Coveleski mistook it for his hit-and-run sign and came in so strong on the snare drum that no one could identify the fiddle in the mixup. "The result was that the leader asked for waivers on old Coveleski very promptly, and the girl was not long in following suit. That snare drum incident has been the sore point in his makeup ever since." "I wish I'd known it last fall about the first of September," declared McGraw. But the real snapper came later when the Cincinnati club was whipsawed on the information. In a trade with Philadelphia, Griffith got Coveleski for Cincinnati along with several other players. Each game he started against us he got the old "rat-a-tat-tat." Griffith protested to the umpires, but it is impossible to stop a thing of that sort even though the judges of play did try. The Pole did not finish another game against the Giants until his last in the Big League. One day we were hitting him near and far, and the "rat-a-tat-tat" chorus was only interrupted by the rattle of the bats against the ball, when he looked in at the bench to see if Griffith wanted to take him out, for it was about his usual leaving time. "Stay in there and get it," shouted back Griff.