said Joe. "How long
does your contract have to run?"

"A year yet," replied Iredell. "But contracts, you know, are like pie
crust, they're easily broken."

"What do you mean by that?" demanded Joe sharply.

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all," said Iredell, a little nervously, as though
he had said more than he intended. "But to tell the truth, Joe, I'm sore
on this whole question of contracts. It's like a yoke that galls me."

"Oh, I don't know," responded Joe. "A good many folks would like to be
galled that way. A good big salary, traveling on Pullmans, stopping at the
best hotels, posing for pictures, and having six months of the year to
ourselves. If that's a yoke, it's lined with velvet."

"But it's a yoke, just the same," persisted Iredell stubbornly. "Most men
in business are free to accept any offer that's made to them. We can't. We
may be offered twice as much as we're getting, but we have to stay where
we are just the same."

"Well, that's simply because it's baseball," argued Joe. "You know just as
well as I do that that's the only way the game can be carried on. It
wouldn't last a month if players started jumping from one team to another,
or from one league to another. The public would lose all interest in it,
and it's the public that pays our salaries."

"Pays our salaries!" snapped Iredell. "Puts money in the hands of the
owners, you mean. They get the feast and we get the crumbs. What's our
measly salary compared with what they get? I was just reading in the paper
that the Giants cleaned up two hundred thousand dollars this year, net
profit, and yet it's the players that bring this money in at the gate."

"Yes," Joe admitted. "But they are the men who put up the capital and take
the chances. Suppose they had lost two hundred thousand dollars this year.
We'd have had our salaries just the same."

Just then Burkett and Curry came along and dropped into seats beside the
pair.

"Hello, Red," greeted Joe, at the same time nodding to Burkett. "How are
your ribs feeling, after that bear hug you got this afternoon?"

Curry grinned.

"That's all right," he said. "But he never touched me with the ball. And
that umpire was a boob not to give me the run."

"What were you fellows talking about so earnestly?" asked Burkett, with
some curiosity.

"Oh, jug-handled things like baseball contracts," responded Iredell.

"They're the bunk all right," declared Burkett, emphatically.

"Bunk is right," said Curry.