He let Al Spalding do about as he pleased, and pitch as many balls as he wished without calling them, and once when I was at the bat and he could not induce me to hit at the wild ones that he was sending in he fired a vicious one straight in my direction, when, becoming irritated in my turn, I dropped the bat and walked out in his direction with a view of administering a little proper punishment to the frisky gentleman.

He discovered what was coming, however, and meekly crawled back, piteously begging pardon and declaring it all a mistake.

There was one result of the game, however, which was that when the Rockford people were organizing a professional nine they wrote to Marshalltown and tried to secure the whole Anson family, and Adrian, who was still only a boy, was allowed to sign with them, I retaining his older brother at home to aid me in my business." I am inclined to think that the old gentleman is mistaken in the substitution of a "Bounding Rock" for a "Ryan Dead Ball" in that game, although I do remember that the stitching was different from anything that we had ever seen before, and it may be that we were fooled as he has stated.

If so the trick was certainly a clever one.
That same fall Sager and Haskins were engaged by the Rockford team, and I have always thought that it was due to the representations made by them that I was engaged to play with the Forest Citys the following season.

I signed with them for a salary of sixty-six dollars a month, which was then considered a fairly good salary for a ball player, and especially one who was only eighteen years old and a green country lad at that.
All that winter Sager and I practiced as best we could in the loft of my father's barn and I worked as hard as I knew how in order to become proficient in the ball-playing art.
Before saying farewell to Marshalltown and its ball players let me relate a most ludicrous incident that took place there some time before my departure.