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Show "SAFE AT HOME" CRIES BILL KLEM, UMPIRE (By Damon Runyan) j . New- York, March 6. Umpire Bill I Klem, alert and assertive, was tho very first man to gallop down the gangplank when tile Lusitania creaked creak-ed wearily into her berth in the bleak North river today. Behind him Bill heard a wild clatter of feet, while a bleacher cheer swept the pier where the guards were holding a big crowd In leash. An instant before ho was enfolded by the throng. Bill paused and autocratically dropped his handB, palms downward and fingers fin-gers wide. His lips moved. He half squatted. It was force of habit. "Safe," said Bill. The Giauts and the White Sox had crpssed the home plate. Germany" Schaefer, a trifle portly port-ly rrom the profuse provender of the far ports of the world 'and a tririe I balder than common, was close behind be-hind the famous umpire in the dash down the plank, but for once In his life and once only the Washington comedian overlooked a chance to protest pro-test a decision. Schaefer did not even wnlt to have his broad back hammered by the well-meaning fists of a few thousand baseball fans; he did not stop to listen lis-ten to the importunities of his cell mate, Nick Altrock, who was sont posthaste by Clark Griffith to gave "Germany" from the clutches of the Fedorals. He said a few "hollos" here and there and then disappeared behind the hillocks of show that lay outside the Cunard piers He ws a man of single and singular singu-lar purpose today, was "Germany" Schaefer, sometime fellow traveler of John J. McGraw, Charles Comiskey and James J. Callahan, and that purpose, pur-pose, as he later explained when in a calmer mood, was to hie himself Into a Broadway cafe where the world's tour first started, as far as he was concerned, and to think, and think, and think of the places he had been. |