The next is "Red" Ames, although designated as "Leon" by his family when a very small boy before he began to play ball. (He is still called "Leon" in the winter.) Ames is of Warren, Ohio, and the Giants, and he is said to hold the Marathon record for being the most unlucky pitcher that ever lived, and I agree with the sayers. For several seasons, Ames couldn't seem to win a ball game, no matter how well he pitched. In 1909, "Red" twirled a game on the opening day of the season against Brooklyn that was the work of a master. For nine innings he held his opponents hitless, only to have them win in the thirteenth. Time and again Ames has pitched brilliantly, to be finally beaten by a small score, because one of the men behind him made an error at a critical moment, or because the team could not give him any runs by which to win. No wonder the newspapers began to speak of Ames as the "hoodoo" pitcher and the man "who couldn't win." There was a cross-eyed fellow who lived between Ames and the Polo Grounds, and "Red" used to make a detour of several blocks en route to the park to be sure to miss him in case he should be out walking. But one day in 1911, when it was his turn to pitch, he bumped into that cross-eyed man and, in spite of the fact that he did his duty by his hat and got three or four small boys to help him out, he failed to last two innings. When it came time to go West on the final trip of the 1911 season, Ames was badly discouraged. "I don't see any use in taking me along, Mac," he said to McGraw a few days before we left. "The club can't win with me pitching if the other guys don't even get a foul." The first stop was in Boston, and on the day we arrived it rained. In the mail that day, addressed to Leon Ames, came a necktie and a four-leaf clover from a prominent actress, wishing Ames good luck. The directions were inside the envelope. The four-leaf clover, if the charm were to work, must be worn on both the uniform and street clothes, and the necktie 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."