Of Gandil the less said the better. There was a bad streak in him that ran from his toes to his crown. The unforgivable offense in my book is complete disloyalty, and he embodied it. I doubt if he could take a drink straight. But Hal was a different story. Weaver came up to me one day preceding the opening of the Douglas-Juarez series. He said: "Watch Hal, I think there's something up but I can't tell you why." Sure enough, Chase went sour. In the field he looked impossible on at least four easy plays, and the game was saved for Douglas only by extra sensational fielding on the part of a youngster who later went to the Cardinals. I went to Hal after the game, and said: "You tried to throw that one." He said: "Sure." I then asked him why, and he replied: "You know that Chinaman from Lordsburg? (one of the local gamblers) well, he came up and asked if I wouldn't boot a few and try to help Juarez. He's a nice fellow, and I said sure, but I didn't have any money on the game and he wasn't paying me." And the funny part of it is, as I afterwards made sure, that Chase was telling the absolute truth. There were many other stories such as this one and all to the same end. Some of them would make for much racier reading but aren't fit for a sports page. I am certain from what I knew of him that any good psychiatrist would have agreed that Chase was insane. The year after the Chinaman incident, a group of the boys were celebrating with a wild ride through the hills near Tyrone, N.M., after a game at Fort Bayard. The car went over a cliff. The other boys crawled out of the wreck but they had to drag Prince Hal out. He had gone through the windshield — sliding feet first for the first time in his life, and the glass had severed the Achilles tendon in both feet. He tried to come back in the spring. The first time up he clouted a triple over the left fielder's head, but he fell down three times running to first, and the ball was retrieved before he got there. He walked off that base path into the shadows — a crippled bum at last totally unfitted for the only thing at which he was ever useful. He was crying like a kid and there were many other eyes on that field and in the stands which were suspiciously moist.