"Then, stooping down, the Sergeant took up a parcel and read off my name, and threw it over to me. I caught it on the fly. The Sergeant kept on reading out 'Yank' and parcels came through the air like a bombardment. The first parcel I picked up was stamped 'Passed by Censor' and contained twelve brand new balls, or, at least, eleven, and the remains of one. This twelfth ball was stamped 'Opened by Censor,' but search as I could, I could find no stamp reading 'Sewed up by Censor.' We did the sewing up, but that ball looked like a duck's egg when we had finished. Alex and I roundly cussed the Censor. Later, we both cussed the inventor of baseball. There was a reason. "The readers of the _Telegram_ had nobly responded to our appeal. There were enough gloves and balls for two teams, and even a chest-protector and mask. The mask was an article of great curiosity to all. Some of them thought it was a bomb protector. Everyone in turn tried it on, and everyone, upon learning that the catcher was to wear the mask, wanted to immediately sign up for that position. Alex and I could have been elected to Parliament right there. The next afternoon, the candidates, forty in all, and the rest of the company, turned out _en masse_ on the baseball field, which we had laid out during our previous stay in rest billets. "From that day on, Alex and I led a dog's life. Though on paper everything looked bright, and the candidates were letter perfect in the game, or thought they were, on the field they were dubs of the worst caliber,--regular boneheads. If McGraw had had that mob wished on him, he would have chucked up his job and taken the stump for Women Suffrage, so you can appreciate our fix. "Alex was a really good pitcher; plenty of curved stuff, having played semi-pro ball in the United States. It was my intention to catch for him, and fill in the other positions with the most likely candidates. This scheme did not work in with the popular version a little bit. Out of the forty trying for the team, twenty-eight insisted on being catcher. They wanted to secure that mask. If there had been a camera, each of the forty would have had a photo taken of himself wearing the 'wire cage.' Here was a great dilemma. At that time I was only a private, and there were Sergeants, Corporals, and even an officer who wanted to catch. Alex again came to the rescue. Calling me aside he said: "'Leave it to me, Yank, I'll fix 'em. I'll try out each one in turn. Let him wear the mask, and I'll send in some curves, and after the ball cracks them on the shins a couple of times you couldn't pay 'em to put on the cage.'