"The Tommies were strange to curved balls, and Alex had speed. It did my heart good to see him dampen their ardor and dent their anatomy at the same time. The Tommies would see the ball coming to them and would reach up their hands to get it. Then the ball would break and hit them on the shin or knee. After five or six had retired, rubbing sore spots and cussing Alex out, no one else wanted to catch, and the situation was saved. "Tommy is a natural born soccer player and clever with his feet, but stupid with his hands when it comes to baseball. Several of them had a bad habit of stopping grounders with their feet, especially our shortstop. He would see a hot grass-eater coming his way; then, instead of using his hands, he would put the side of his foot in front of it. The ball would climb his leg and hit him in the chin or eye. After receiving a puffed-up lip and a beautiful black eye, he flatly refused to play unless I would let him wear the mask. (Americans, picture a shortstop wearing a catcher's mask, and then sympathize with Alex and me.) The shortstop was a Sergeant, and through diplomatic reasons I gave the mask to him. At this every infielder wanted to wear it. Alex solved this by putting in another shortstop and giving me the mask. (In England they have a game called 'Rounders,' in which you are supposed to hit the base runner with the ball to put him out. This is generally a tennis ball and does not hurt very much.) Well, those Tommies had a habit of lamming the baseball with all their might at the unfortunate runner. Many an early practice was broken up this way, because the team would lose interest in baseball when they had a chance to view a fight between a giver and receiver. "After about ten days' practice we had picked two pretty fair teams and arranged for a scrub game. Alex's side won, thanks to his pitching. Then, as is usual in baseball, things began to happen. A jinx seemed to rest on our candidates. Every time we had to go up the line on a working party, one or two of the players would get wounded or killed; in fact, being a baseball player got to be a perfect Jonah, and the Tommies became superstitious. If one of our team happened to be working among ten or twelve other company men, he was sure to get hit, while the other fellows came through without a scratch. Alex and I also began to get frightened, and decided to chuck up the whole thing before we clicked it ourselves.