CHAPTER XXIX
QUICK WORK
Joe’s father and mother, together with Mabel and Reggie, had reached the station a few minutes before train time, and Clara and Jim, who might be excused for tarrying, had joined them a little later. They were somewhat puzzled at not finding Joe on the platform.
“You folks get on anyway,” suggested Jim. “Probably Joe is up in the car with the team. McRae may have nabbed him to have a talk with him.”
After they were safely in their coach, Jim hurried forward to the Giants’ cars. He went through both of them, but before he had finished his search the gong rang and the train started.
“Seen anything of Joe?” he asked McRae.
“No,” was the answer. “I suppose he’s in the car behind with his folks.”
“But he isn’t,” replied Jim. “I thought I’d find him here.”
“What?” fairly yelled McRae, springing to his feet. “You don’t mean to say he’s missed the train?”
In an instant all was agitation.
The smoker was first searched, then every car in the train from end to end, but, of course, Joe was not to be found.
McRae and Robson were wild and the rest of the team were glum.
“Of course, he can get that eight o’clock train in the morning,” was the only comfort McRae would allow himself. “That will get him to the grounds in time, but he won’t be in good shape to pitch right after the trip.”
But Jim had reasons of his own for fear, and a cold sweat broke out on him as he thought of Fleming. But he put on as good a face as possible in order to reassure the girls and the rest of Joe’s party, who were torn with anxiety and apprehension.
It was broad daylight when Joe woke to a sense of his surroundings. His head swam and it was some time before he could recall the events of the preceding night.
He was in a shabby room, sitting on the floor against the wall with his hands tied behind him. As his brain cleared he was conscious of a face looking at him curiously. There was a sweet sickly odor in the room.
“Waking up, eh?” asked Moriarty with a grin.
“You’ll pay for this,” said Joe, thickly.
Moriarty laughed.
“Now don’t get sore,” he counseled. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. You’ll be out of this in a little while now. We’re going to let you go just as soon as the New York train has gone.”
Joe tried to digest this. Why should they keep him from getting the train for New York. Then in a blinding flash his brain woke from its daze.
It was the day of the last game! And he was in Boston! And if he missed the morning train he could not get to New York before the game was over!
His heart turned sick. What would McRae and the rest of the boys say? What would Mabel and the folks think?
He pictured the consternation when he should fail to turn up in time. The team would be demoralized. Whom would they pitch? Only Jim was available and he had pitched two days before. And he would be so full of worry over his friend that he could not be at his best.
Was the World Series then to be lost? Was the splendid fight the boys had put up to go for nothing?
“You only got a little tap on the head,” Moriarty was saying. “It was just enough to make you quiet, and chloroform did the rest. We didn’t figure to be any rougher than we had to be.”
Joe made no reply but he was thinking hard and fast.
He tested the bonds that held his hands behind him. They seemed tight but not excessively so. Probably his captors had put most of their faith in the chloroform.
With as little apparent exertion as possible, he began to stretch and strain at them. His powerful wrists and hands seemed endowed with double their ordinary strength and to his delight he could feel the cords give.
Moriarty was alone with him, but Joe could hear low voices in an adjoining room. One of them he thought he recognized as Fleming’s, and his teeth gritted with rage.
At last he wriggled one hand free, although he had rasped his wrist till he felt it was bleeding. A moment more and he had freed his other hand, though he still kept both behind him.
Moriarty was yawning after his night’s vigil.
“What time is it now?” Joe muttered sleepily.
“Just a little after eight,” Moriarty answered. “The train’s just about started now, but we’ll let you cool your heels here for another hour or so. Then you can walk the ties if you want to.”
“You’ve got me pretty well trussed up here,” said Joe. “The fellow who tied these knots knew his business.”
“Yes,” said Moriarty, complacently, strolling over to look at them. “He’s a dandy when it comes to doing——”
But he got no further.
As he bent down, Joe’s muscular hands darted out and clutched him by the throat. The yell he started to give was stifled at its birth. In a moment Joe was on top of him with his knee on his chest.
Moriarty struggled as hard as he could, but his liquor-soaked frame speedily collapsed before Joe’s onslaught, and in a moment he lay limp and senseless. Then Joe flung him aside and rose to his feet.
He rubbed his legs vigorously to restore the circulation until he felt the strength coming back into them.
There was but one door leading from the room. Joe went to it on tiptoe. He could still hear the murmur of voices. He flung the door open suddenly and burst into the adjoining room.
Fleming and Connelly sprang to their feet in consternation. With a powerful uppercut, Joe sent Fleming crashing to the floor. Connelly retreated and Joe had no time to bother with him.
He flung himself down the stairs and out into the street. Half a block away he saw a taxicab coming toward him. He rushed toward it.
“To the South Station!” he gasped. “Quick! Quick! Quick!”
In an amazingly short time, the taxicab, running at high speed, landed him at the depot. Joe saw by the station clock that it was a quarter to nine.
Frantically, he sought out the traffic manager and ordered a special.
“I must be in New York by one o’clock,” he cried. “I must, I tell you. Never mind the price. Get me a special.”
The official hummed and hawed. “It would take a little time to make it up, to get a car. It would——”
“Don’t wait for a car,” interrupted Joe, in frenzy. “I’ll ride on the locomotive.”
In ten minutes the train despatcher had arranged for the right of way, and one of the road’s fastest locomotives puffed up. Joe sprang into the cab, the engineer flung the throttle open and they were off.
“Can you make it?” questioned our hero, anxiously.
“We’ll make it or bust,” was the grim response of the engineer.
He was one of the oldest and most reliable men on the road and as Joe looked at him he felt his confidence rising.
Yet a good many miles lay between our hero and New York City.
And a hundred things might happen to delay the special.
On and on they went, humming over the steel rails at such a rate of speed that Joe could scarcely see the telegraph poles.
Suddenly the engineer pulled on a lever and the big locomotive slackened speed so quickly that our hero was all but thrown to the floor of the cab.
“Wh—what’s the matter?” he gasped, when he could catch his breath.
“Signal against us,” was the short reply. “It’s O. K. now;” and once more the locomotive sped on its way.
“Phew! you have to have your eyes open, don’t you?”
“That’s it—just like you do, when you are pitching,” answered the old engineer.
“Some work, running a locomotive,” mused the young baseball player. “I guess an engineer earns all the money he gets.”
Half an hour later came another scare. Again the locomotive pulled up, this time to allow an automobile full of people to pass over the tracks. An instant sooner and the big engine would have ground the “joy riders” to death.
“Meet such fools almost every trip,” said the engineer. “Seems as if they wanted to be killed.”
“Why don’t you have gates at such crossings?”
“It would cost too much money to have a gate at every crossing,” was the explanation. “We do have ’em on the main roads. That was only a little dirt road—I don’t know why the auto was on it. I wasn’t looking for anything faster than a farm wagon or a buggy.”
“You must have some accidents?”
“Oh, yes, but not many, considering the risks we run. But we wouldn’t have hardly any accidents if the folks were a bit more careful. But some of ’em don’t heed the warnings. They will read a ‘Safety First’ sign and then run right into danger, just as if they were blind,” went on the old engineer, with a grimace.
They were now on an upgrade, but presently they gained the top of the rise and down they streaked on the other side, at a rate of speed that fairly took Joe’s breath away.
“Some running, and no mistake!” he gasped. “You must be making a mile a minute, or better!”
“Running at the rate of seventy-five miles an hour. But we can’t keep it up. Here is where we slow down,” and they did so, as a long curve appeared in the tracks.
“I don’t know as I want to be a locomotive engineer. You run too fast.”
“And I don’t want to be a baseball player—you pitch too fast,” chuckled the old engineer.
“Well, everyone to his own calling, I suppose.”
On they plunged in the wildest ride Baseball Joe had ever known. Under arches and over bridges, thundering through towns with scarcely a lessening of speed, past waiting trains drawn up on side tracks to give the special the right of way, on, on, lurching, swaying, tearing along, until at ten minutes before one the panting engine drew up in the yards at New York City.
The game was to begin at two.
Baseball Joe leaped into a taxicab with orders to scorch up the pavements in a mad dash to the Polo Grounds. Then the clubhouse, into which Joe tumbled, covered with grime and cinders, amid the frantic exclamations of the rubbers and attendants. Then the cooling shower and a quick shift into his uniform, after which Joe, cool, collected, thoroughly master of himself, strolled out on the field where the whole Giant team forgot their practice and made a wild rush for him.
He had fought a good fight. He had kept the faith.
CHAPTER XXX
A GLORIOUS VICTORY
There was a mad scramble and Joe was almost pulled to pieces by his relieved and exulting mates. Then came a torrent of questions which Joe good-naturedly parried.
“After the game, boys, I’ll tell you all about it,” he said, “but just now I want to get a little practice in tossing them over.”
“Didn’t I tell you that nothing could stop that boy from getting here?” crowed Robson, gleefully.
“I thought so myself,” answered McRae, “but when they ’phoned up to me that he hadn’t come in on that regular morning train, I thought our goose was cooked.”
In some mysterious way, though McRae had tried to keep it a profound secret, the news had got abroad that something had occurred that would keep Matson out of the game, and the crowds that had put their chief reliance on that mighty arm of his had been restless and fearful. So when they recognized him the stands rocked and thundered with applause, and the general relief was not much less than that felt by the Giants themselves at the return of their crack pitcher.
But it was toward an upper box that Joe’s eyes first turned. There was a wild flutter of handkerchiefs and clapping of hands. Mabel and Clara were leaning far out and waving to him. But Mrs. Matson’s face was hidden by her handkerchief, and Joe saw his father quietly slip his arm around her. Joe did not dare to look any longer for he suddenly felt a dimness come over his own eyes, and he hastily turned to the tremendous task that confronted him.
For that afternoon he was fighting against odds. His head was still aching from the effects of the blow and the chloroform. The rocking of the engine had made his legs unsteady. And the only food he had had since the night before was a sandwich he had sent for while he was slipping into his uniform.
But it is just such circumstances that bring out the thoroughbred strain in a man, and as Baseball Joe took his place in the box and looked around at the enormous crowd and realized the immense responsibility that rested on him, he rose magnificently to the occasion. Gone was weariness and pain and weakness. His nerves stiffened to the strain, and the game he pitched that afternoon was destined to become a classic in baseball history.
The first ball he whipped over the plate went for a strike. A second and a third followed. And from that time on Joe knew that he held the Bostons in the hollow of his hand.
There are times when to feel invincible is to be invincible. Joe was in that mood. He was a glorious figure of athletic young manhood as he stood there with forty thousand pairs of eyes riveted upon him. He had discarded his cap because the band hurt his head where he had been struck, and his brown hair gleamed in the bright sun as he hurled the ball with deadly precision toward the batter. Like a piston rod his arm shot out untiringly and the ball whistled as it cut the plate.
“Gee whiz, see that ball come over!” muttered McRae.
“He’ll wear himself out,” said Robson, anxiously. “It isn’t in flesh and blood to keep up that gait for nine innings.”
Fraser was in the box for the Bostons, and he, too, was pitching first-class ball. But the Giants by the end of the fourth inning were beginning to solve his delivery. The hits were getting a sharper ring to them and going out more on a line. But superb fielding helped the Bostonian out of several tight places and he “got by” until the fifth.
Then the Giants broke the ice. Larry sent a corking single out to center. Denton whaled out a tremendous hit that had all the earmarks of a home run. But Walters, by a wonderful sprint, got under it and Larry, who had rounded second, had all he could do to get back to first before the throw in.
“Highway robbery,” growled Denton, as he went disconsolately back to the bench.
Willis went out on strikes, but Becker poled out a crashing three-bagger that brought Larry over the rubber for the first run of the game and sent the stands into hysterics.
Becker was caught napping a moment later and the inning ended. The New Yorkers were hilarious while the Boston rooters were correspondingly depressed.
“You’re getting to him, boys!” yelled McRae. “We’ll drive him to the tall timber before long.”
But Fraser had views of his own on that subject and refused to be driven. He had no ambition to be slaughtered to make a New York holiday.
Still, though he uncorked a dazzling assortment of shoots and slants, the Giants scored another run in the sixth though it took two singles, two passes and a wild pitch before it was finally recorded.
Iredell beat out a slow roller to Hobbs and took second on a single by Curry to right field. Both of them were advanced a base on a wild pitch that just touched the tips of Thompson’s fingers as he leaped for it, and rolled all the way to the Bostons’ dugout before it was regained. Joe was purposely passed, Fraser thinking that with the bases full a double play might pull him out of danger.
Mylert hit to Hobbs, forcing Iredell at the plate, although he made a great slide. Another pass given to Burkett forced Curry home for the second run of the game, leaving the bases still full. Larry was at the bat and there was a great chance to “clean up,” as he was frantically urged to do by the excited spectators. But the best he could do was to tap weakly to Fraser who fired it back to the plate making a force out. Thompson, in turn, shot it to Hobbs in plenty of time to get the runner, making a sharp and snappy double play.
“We ought to have made more out of that than we did,” growled McRae. “That’s what I call bush league work. To have the bases full twice and as the result of it all one little measly run!”
“Never mind, John,” chuckled Robson. “It’s one more to the good, anyway, and even if it is measly I’ll bet that Boston would be mighty glad to have one like it.”
In the seventh inning, Walters, the first man up, sent up a high foul that Burkett and Mylert started for at once. Larry, who was field captain, shouted to Burkett to take the ball. But Mylert either did not hear or trusted to his own judgment and collided forcibly with the first baseman, both going to the ground with a crash, while the ball dropped between them.
The other players rushed to the spot and lifted the players to their feet. Luckily, they were not unconscious although badly shaken, but it was fully five minutes before the game was resumed.
Walters’ second effort was a sharp grounder straight at Denton, which the latter shot to first in plenty of time. But the ball went high and rolled almost to the right field wall. By the time it was retrieved, Walters had got around to third amid the frantic acclamations of the Boston rooters who thought they saw at last a chance to score.
With a man on third, no man out and some of the heaviest sluggers coming up, it looked as though the Red Sox would break their string of zeros.
A long fly to the outfield, even though caught, would in all probability bring in Walters from third.
But Joe tightened up and struck out the next man up in three pitched balls. He made Hobbs chop a bounder to the box on which Walters did not dare to try for the plate. Then with two out he beguiled Girdner into sending up a towering foul which Mylert caught almost without stirring from his position. Poor Walters, left at third, hurled his cap to the ground in a movement of despair, and the gloom about the Boston section of the stands could be fairly felt.
The Bostons now were growing desperate. They bunted. They tried to wait Joe out. They sought to rattle him by finding fault with his position in the box. They put in pinch hitters. They pulled all the “inside stuff” they knew.
But Joe obstinately refused to “crack.” He “had everything” on the ball. His change of pace was perfect. His curves worked beautifully. His drop ball broke sharply, inches below their bats.
“All over but the shouting,” chuckled McRae, as the Red Sox came in for their last inning.
But two minutes later he was pale as chalk while the Boston partisans were in delirium.
Girdner sent an easy grasser to Larry, who booted it, and the batter reached first. Stock followed with a bunt that Denton slipped down on as he ran in for it. These mishaps must have got on Burkett’s nerves, for he squarely muffed Thompson’s pop fly that any “busher” could have caught.
There were three men on bases, though none had made a hit. No man was out, and Cooper, the slugger of the Boston team, was coming to the plate.
A hit of any kind would bring in two men and tie the game. A two-bagger would clear the bases and put Boston in the lead. The Red Sox rooters were on their feet and screaming like mad.
Joe shot over a ball at which Cooper refused to “bite.” The next one, however, suited him better, and he sent it hurtling toward the box like a bullet.
Joe saw it coming two feet over his head. Like a flash he leaped up and caught it in his ungloved hand. He turned and shot it over to Denton at third. Denton touched the bag putting out Girdner who had turned to go back and then got the ball down to Larry before Stock could get back to second.
It was a triple play! The game was over, the Series was won and the Giants had become the champions of the world!
For a moment the crowd was fairly stunned. Then wild howls and yells arose and an uproar ensued that was deafening. Staid citizens forgot their dignity and danced up and down like madmen, utter strangers hugged each other, straw hats were tossed into the air or smashed on their owners’ heads. Then the crowd hurdled over the stands and swooped down on the players who were making tracks as fast as they could for the clubhouse to escape the deluge.
“A no-hit game! A triple play!” gasped McRae, as he almost wrenched Joe’s arm from its socket. “Joe, you’re a wonder. And now for that tour around the world. You’ve got to go with me, Joe. I won’t take No for an answer. You’ll be our greatest drawing card.”
How Joe accepted the invitation and the startling events that followed will be told in the next volume of the series, to be entitled: “Baseball Joe Around the World; Or, Pitching on a Grand Tour.”
It was a long time before Joe could tear himself away from his hilarious team-mates and reach his party at the Marlborough. How his mother cried over him in her joy and pride, how Mr. Matson wrung his hand and patted his shoulder hardly trusting himself to speak, how Clara hugged and kissed him, how Mabel would have liked to do the same but did not dare to, how Jim and Reggie mauled and pounded him—all this can be easily guessed. They were happy beyond all words.
But there was an impalpable something in the air that gradually thinned out the party. Mrs. Matson motioned her husband to come with her. Jim and Clara, only too glad of the excuse, slipped away, casting a roguish glance behind them, and even the obtuse Reggie remembered a letter he had to write and vanished.
Joe and Mabel, left alone, looked at each other, but Mabel’s eyes fell instantly before what they read in Joe’s. Her cheeks flushed, her breath came faster and she began to tremble.
“Mabel,” Joe began, a trifle huskily.
“Yes, Joe,” she faltered.
He took her little glove from his pocket and bent toward her tenderly.
“This little glove of yours has done wonders for me,” he said. “It has helped me to win two championships. But these victories are nothing to me unless I win you, too. Will you be my wife, Mabel—will you? You know I love you.”
He read his answer in the beautiful eyes full of love and trust that she turned up to his. The next instant she was in his arms.
Decidedly, it was Joe’s winning day.
And that good right arm of his had made it a winning day also for hosts of others. The whole National League was aflame with exultation. The city of New York was wild with joy. And every member of the Giant team was tasting the delights of victory to the full.
They had all played their parts well and ably. But they knew perfectly well that more credit belonged to Joe than to any one else and they were loud in their praises of his skill and courage.
“I’ve seen some dandy pitching in my life,” Robson declared to the group of Giant players who had gathered round for an impromptu jollification, “but that performance of Matson’s this afternoon was far and away the best of all. He was as cool as a cucumber and it was impossible to rattle him. He couldn’t have done better. He’s the greatest pitcher in the League to-day, barring none!”
“Right you are!” exclaimed McRae, clapping him on the shoulder. “I tell you, Robbie, it was a great day for New York when I signed Baseball Joe for the Giant team!”
THE END
THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES
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Joe is an everyday country boy who loves to play baseball and particularly to pitch.
Joe’s great ambition was to go to boarding school and play on the school team.
Joe goes to Yale University. In his second year he becomes a varsity pitcher and pitches in several big games.
In this volume the scene of action is shifted from Yale college to a baseball league of our central states.
From the Central League Joe is drafted into the St. Louis Nationals. A corking baseball story all fans will enjoy.
How Joe was traded to the Giants and became their mainstay in the box makes an interesting baseball story.
The rivalry was of course of the keenest, and what Joe did to win the series is told in a manner to thrill the most jaded reader.
The Giants and the All-Americans tour the world, playing in many foreign countries.
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The Boy Scouts movement has swept over our country like wildfire, and is endorsed by our greatest men and leading educators. No author is better qualified to write such a series as this than Professor Warren, who has watched the movement closely since its inception in England some years ago.
This initial volume tells how the news of the scout movement reached the boys and how they determined to act on it. They organized the Fox Patrol, and some rivals organized another patrol. More patrols were formed in neighboring towns and a prize was put up for the patrol scoring the most points in a many-sided contest.
This story begins with a mystery that is most unusual. There is a good deal of fun and adventure, camping, fishing, and swimming, and the young heroes more than once prove their worth.
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