[legendsport]

Egypt, GA: December 25, 1930:

The home of Rufus and Alice Barrell was filled with joyful noise, so much so, that it took a few moments before anyone noticed that the telephone was ringing.

Rufus grabbed the earpiece and put it to his ear, leaning close to the box on the kitchen wall so he'd be able to be heard over the noise from the gathering in the other room.

The operator told him he had a long distance call and then put the caller through.

"Merry Christmas, Pop!" he heard his son Jack say. The connection was surprisingly good. Usually Rufus could barely hear when one of his sons called from whatever corner of North American they might currently be sitting in.

"Same to you, son," Rufus said with a smile on his face. He asked, as he usually did, where his son was.

"I'm in Montreal. We have a game with the Nationals today," Jack said.

"And how are things, coach?" Rufus asked.

"I'm still getting used to this coaching thing. But I've got some games under my belt now, so the fellows are becoming accustomed to taking direction from me. It's hard to make that transition from teammate to boss, you know?"

"I suppose I can see that, although I was never a manager or coach myself," Rufus said.

Jack explained that the Dukes were part of a three-way race in the North American Hockey Conference's Canadian Division. "The Nationals are sort of the weak sister here in Montreal. This is really the Valiants' town," Jack explained. "But I've already told my players that we can't afford to take this club lightly. They've already beaten us twice this season, so hopefully that message has sunk in."

Rufus caught his son up on how his siblings were doing. Joe was back with Dorothy, having promised to cut down on his drinking and had been offered a job coaching college football at Gates University. The school was located in Malibu and therefore close enough to Hollywood that Dorothy could continue her acting career. The Gates Griffins were trying to break into the big time and getting a long-time pro like Joe was seen as a good recruiting tool if nothing else. Even Joe admitted that he had no coaching experience, though he had spent years working with Carl Boon who was considered one of the better pro coaches (something for which Jack himself could vouch as he'd played for Carl for years himself). Joe's newest son Charlie was five months old and doing well.

Rollie was at the farm, his Detroit Maroons having completed their season with a championship. Due to financial constraints, Rollie had been forced to sell shares in the team, many of which were bought by local fans. He had admitted to Rufus that this had saved the team as the club was good, and the players needed to be paid accordingly. Francie had recovered from the birth of their second child, and young Alice was now nearly a year old, and though small, seemed to be healthy after a somewhat precarious first few months of life.

Danny was also on hand. His wife Gladys had lost her job with the Brooklyn basketball club when the league suspended its operations. Dan Prescott had promised to bring her back if the basketball league returned to action, but Rollie had privately warned her that he thought it could be several years before the league could resume, and even that was no sure thing. Dan himself was increasingly frustrated with his lack of playing time. He had spent the '30 season in A ball, where he hit .348 in a largely pinch-hitting role before being returned to AAA where he hit .238, also mostly as a pinch-hitter. He was considering going into coaching, possibly back at Capital Academy where he had been offered the job as the Track & Field coach. Rufus was advising him to stick it out for at least one more year.

Fred had won his bet with Dan by driving in 101 runs for the Chicago Cougars that season. He hit .324 and was considered one of the better catchers in the FABL despite having barely 200 games with the Cougars under his belt. His wife Tillie was a fixture at Cougar home games, sitting in a box right beside the home dugout and offering loud encouragement to not only Freddie, but also his team mates. "She might be our biggest fan," Cougars manager Hank Sims had told Rufus, who after attending a game with Tillie, wholeheartedly agreed with Sims' assessment. Alice had already begun hinting to both Dan and Fred about grandchildren. In Dan's case it was Gladys' career that had held things up; but in Fred's it was as he told his mother, a case of "wanting to enjoy ourselves a little before getting tied down with children."

Tommy was, like Fred, a member of the Cougars organization; the only difference being that Fred had earned a spot on the Cougars' roster while Tommy was still a farmhand. An injury shortened his first pro season. He had been great at Class A Lincoln (9-6, 2.68 ERA, 114 strikeouts in 110.2 innings) and considerably less so at Double A Mobile (2-3, 6.48 ERA with 16 walks to 12 strikeouts in 33.1 innings pitched). His dream of being a two-way star was, he felt, somewhat in jeopardy due to his injuries. Rufus knew, from his contacts in the Cougars' scouting department, that another factor was that Tommy hadn't quite shown the form at the plate that he had in college where in the 1929 season he'd hit .335 and clubbed 11 home runs. One of the scouts also mentioned to Rufus that some in the organization thought Tom was a little too fond of the ladies and that he needed to concentrate more on his conditioning. Rufus took this with a grain of salt - the scout in question was of the school that believed a woman sapped a ballplayer's stamina, something Rufus himself did not believe. Still, he knew he wouldn't mention this to Alice, but might have a word with Tommy about it.

Bobby continued to be a revelation. The 1930 season was just his second as a pro, and unlike Fred, he had not played in college but came straight out of high school. While Bobby had climbed through Classes C, B and A in 1929, he spent all of '30 in Double A and, by any estimation, tore it up. He hit .353, racking up an even 200 hits in 567 at-bats, He had 20 doubles, 11 triples and 23 home runs, drove in 122 runs and scored 97 (there was no chance either Fred or Dan would make a bet with Bobby on offensive stats). Rufus had heard from a friend in the Keystones front office that the team thought there was a good chance Bob would open the '31 season on the big league roster. Bobby was, as far as Rufus had heard, the complete opposite of Tom when it came to his off-field life. More plainly, Rufus had heard that Bobby had very little use for anything not related to baseball. The Japanese tour might have been the only thing that kept him from going to Cuba to play winter ball (assuming the Keystones would have allowed it). More so than his other sons, Bobby seemed determined to be the best ballplayer he could be and nothing else mattered to him.

Then there was Harry. He had hit .371 as a high school junior and his fielding was likely already FABL quality. The trip to Japan had proven as much when Harry had convinced Rufus to let him take some infield practice with the touring team. Both Don Ward and Jack Cleaves had told Rufus they thought Harry's glove was right there with the best of the FABL players. "If he can hit, he's going to be something," Rankin Kellogg had told Bobby, who passed it along to his father. But his attitude... Harry was a prankster at heart and while this made him popular with his team mates, it did not endear him to his teachers and school administrators. Rufus had already told his youngest son that he needed to take this final season of high school baseball seriously - and that included taking school itself seriously. "The FABL clubs are run by older men. And even though most of them played the game, they expect youngsters like you to take this seriously. Baseball is first and foremost, to them at least, a serious business where money is arguably more important than wins. So keep the shenanigans to a minimum. There'll be plenty of time for goofing off later." Harry had assured his father he would do this... Rufus wasn't quite convinced.

Betsy had added golf to her resume. Like Rollie, she seemed a natural and when Rollie and Francie arrived in mid-December, Francie had played a round with Betsy, noting that the 16-year-old was every bit as good as she had been at that age. And Francie York had been one of the top amateur players in the U.S. She also played tennis at a high level and had even continued to occasionally worm her way into baseball and basketball games with Harry and his friends (some of whom found it amusing until she showed that like her brothers she had plenty of athletic ability). Both Noble Jones and Georgia Baptist were already trying to get her to play tennis at their schools. She was lukewarm to their entreaties however, due in large part to having acquired a boyfriend. A team mate of Harry's, Chris Clarke was a smallish (5'8) left-handed pitcher who had just started his freshman year at Wisconsin State. Betsy pined for him, which Alice found amusing and Rufus, annoying. Clarke had gone undrafted in 1929, and though Rufus thought he could possibly turn into something at college, that remained to be seen. In the meantime, he wished Betsy focused more on herself insead of pining for a boy who was currently enjoying his first northern winter (he'd written Betsy a letter describing his first snowball fight).

The grandchildren were also doing well. Joe's oldest son Rufus was now 13 and the hottest pitching prospect to hit the Atlanta area since his Uncle Tommy a few years before. Unlike most left-handed pitchers, young Rufus threw hard and his grandfather expected he could very well be amongst the game's hardest throwers. Tall and gangly, he needed to fill out, but with Joe as his father, that seemed to be preordained. His sister Gloria was a good student and reminded her grandparents of a female version of Rollie, which thrilled them both. Jimmy's two children, Agnes (now 11) and James (10) were happy and healthy and in James' case, getting a doctoral-level education in baseball thanks to his adopted father, the great hitter Powell Slocum. All in all, everyone was doing well, despite the growing fears of the economic downturn becoming a depression (some newspaper editorials were already describing it that way, though the Hoover administration continued to stress that it was a temporary setback and things would normalize soon).

Though Rufus and Alice both missed Joe and Jack and their families, they knew how blessed they were in their family. As Rufus looked around at the crowd in his home, he told Alice, "We might need to put an addition on the house if this family keeps growing."


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