It was bright and early the next morning when the two friends sallied forth right after breakfast. The air had a tang and sting to it that sent the blood coursing swiftly through their veins, and the delicious buckwheat cakes for which Mrs. Matson was famous formed no small element in their general sense of well-being.
“Now for Talham Tabbs!” exclaimed Reggie. “I’ll bet he’ll be stumped at seeing me again. He thinks I’m hundreds of miles from here, if he thinks of me at all. I’m mighty curious to see how he’ll carry things off.”
“He seems to be an artist at carrying things off,” laughed Joe, with a sly poke in Reggie’s ribs.
“You’re right there,” grinned Reggie, who could take a joke. “But you can bet if I get that bunch of securities back, it’ll have to be more than an artist who’ll get it away from me again. It’ll have to be a magician, at the very least.”
“I’ve been wondering what we’ll do,” he continued, “if the fellow refuses to talk.”
“I don’t think he’ll do that,” answered Joe. “He’ll probably realize that the jig is up and make a clean breast of the whole thing. If he doesn’t I’ll try my ‘secret society’ gag and see if it will work the second time. It worked like a charm once and may again.”
They had to pass the hotel, and Sol Cramer, who was standing just inside the door, motioned them to come in.
“Haven’t a minute to stop, Sol,” explained Joe, as they stepped inside. “I’m going down to the jail with this friend of mine who has special business with that crazy man. We may stop for a minute on our way back. We’ll have a little time to spare then. What’s up?”
“I won’t keep you long,” said Sol, after acknowledging Joe’s introduction of Reggie. “I just thought you might like to take a squint at the New York papers. They’ve just got in, and the sporting pages are full of that deal that puts you on the Giants.”
Joe was getting used by this time to having his picture and his name in the papers, but it was with an especial thrill that he noted how much space was bestowed on him and the flattering terms that the reporters had used in describing his prowess as a pitcher.
Flaring headlines headed each article in the various papers:
THE BIGGEST DEAL OF THE YEAR.
Giants’ Prospects Brighten.—Now for the Pennant!
Below each headline was an extended story, sketching Joe’s career from the time he had entered Yale up to the present, and all of them dwelling on his last year’s work with St. Louis, and the splendid game he had pitched against the Giants at the wind-up of the season. All agreed that it was this game that had clinched McRae’s determination to have Joe on his team.
“You seem to be the whole cheese,” remarked Sol, with a grin. “Just now you’re the most distinguished citizen of Riverside.”
“I’m afraid they’re spreading it on too thick,” said Joe, who knew how precarious was a baseball reputation. “By the end of the year they may be calling me a ‘has-been’ and roasting McRae for getting me on the team.”
“I’ll take a chance on that,” replied Sol confidently. “You’ve been going up the ladder steadily and you’re bound to climb higher. A fellow with your habits is good for ten or fifteen years yet in the big leagues—maybe twice as long as that.”
“That’s what!” chimed in Reggie emphatically. “It’s the old rounders who trail along with drink and who gamble that go back to the bushes. If a man lives straight and cuts out the booze, he can last as long in baseball as in anything else. Even after he gets a little too old for playing, there are plenty of splendid jobs as managers.”
“That’s right, too,” confirmed Sol. “Look at Griff and Clarkey and Jenn and Connie. Why, those fellows are getting enormous salaries!”
“Well, that’s looking a long way ahead,” laughed Joe. “Just at present my job is to make good as pitcher for the Giants, and I’ve got my work cut out for me to do it. But we’ll have to go now, Sol. Thank you for showing me the papers.”
“Save a copy of each of them for me,” said Reggie. “I’ll stop and get them on my way back. I want to cut them out and send them to Mabel,” he explained to Joe, as he hurried away. “She’s so interested in baseball news, you know.”
Joe knew, and he hoped that the interest had in it more of a personal touch than her brother seemed to suspect.
A few minutes’ brisk walk brought them to the jail, and Joe gave a vigorous tug at the bell.
They cooled their heels for two minutes without any response, and Reggie became somewhat impatient.
“Your jailer doesn’t seem to be an early riser,” he remarked. “What’s the matter with him?”
“Oh, Hank Bailey was never known to do anything in a hurry,” chuckled Joe. “Besides, he hasn’t any helper here except his wife, and I suppose he’s busy in some other part of the jail.”
Just then the door opened and Hank appeared. But it was a very different Hank from the boastful and self-confident individual of the day before. He nodded gloomily to Joe, and stared at his companion.
“What’s the matter, Hank?” questioned Joe. “You look as though you had lost the last friend you had on earth. Cheer up, the worst is yet to come.”
“The worst has come already,” responded Hank gloomily.
“What do you mean?” demanded Joe, in quick alarm.
“That crazy man has skipped!” blurted out Hank desperately, with the air of a man who wants to tell the bad news quickly and have it over with.
“What?” shouted Joe and Reggie in chorus.
“That’s what I said,” asserted Hank doggedly.
“When did he escape?” cried Joe, his anger rising.
“How did you come to let him get away from you?” demanded Reggie.
“You don’t suppose I let him go on purpose, do you?” snarled Hank, driven to bay. “He knocked me down and shut the cell door on me, and that’s the last I saw of him.”
“Now look here, Hank,” said Joe, who had gotten control of himself now that the first shock of surprise was over, “this is a serious thing. You’ve got to pull yourself together and think quick, talk quick, and act quick. Tell us now just what happened.”
“It was this way,” explained Hank, his sluggish nature spurred on somewhat by Joe’s sharp, decided tone. “He seemed all right when I went the rounds for the last time last night. Was just as gentle as a lamb. This morning, when I went in to take him his breakfast he was asleep, as far as I could make out. I stooped over to put the tray on the bench, when he suddenly jumped up and fetched me a clip under the chin that knocked me down, me not looking for anything of the kind. Before I could get to my feet, he’d dashed out the cell and shut the door on me. It shuts with a spring lock, and my keys were on the outside. Then he gives an awful laugh and runs down the corridor, and I suppose he let himself out of the front door. I hammered on the cell door and yelled until my wife heard me and came and let me out.”
“How long ago did all this happen?” asked Joe.
“About half an hour ago,” answered Hank.
“I thought you had him strapped to the bed,” said Reggie.
“So he was, but he had his watch and he broke the crystal and sawed away at the straps until they broke. I’ve just been looking over them.”
“But why haven’t you given an alarm?” demanded Joe. “Don’t you realize that a dangerous lunatic is at large and may kill somebody any minute?”
“I was just getting ready to,” answered Hank. “The truth is that I’m so dizzy and flabbergasted that I don’t rightly know whether I’m on my head or my heels.”
It was clear that it would not do to depend on the jailer, and Joe took the matter in his own hands.
“Come along, Reggie,” he cried. “The first thing is to get downtown and give the alarm. Then we’ll set the telegraph and the telephone going and organize a searching party. He can’t have gotten so very far away, and the chances are that we’ll get him yet. Come along.”
They hurried down to the office of the chief of police and told their story. The fire bell was rung, a thing that was done only in the case of a fire or an escape from jail, to put the people on their guard. The news spread like wildfire through the town. From telephone headquarters they called up every town within a radius of twenty miles and described the fugitive. Joe hurriedly called a number of his friends together, and in a few minutes automobiles and sleighs were dashing along every road that led out from town. They inquired at every farmhouse, questioned every passing traveler, fairly combed the surrounding country. All that day and far into the night they worked like troopers, only to return at last weary and defeated.
Talham Tabbs had vanished as completely as though the earth had swallowed him up!
It was a week later and Joe was returning from the post-office where he had stopped for the late afternoon mail.
Reggie had left the day before, although Joe had urged him to remain longer. But a clue had come from another State that, slender as it was, seemed to offer some chance of running down the elusive Tabbs, and Reggie had felt that he ought to follow it up.
“It’s too bad, old man,” Joe had said to him, as he stood on the station platform bidding the dudish young man goodby, “to have come so near to finding your man and yet just miss him.”
“Oh, it’s all in the game!” Reggie had answered, assuming a cheerfulness he was far from feeling. “I have a hunch that I’ll run across him yet and bring him to a show-down.”
“I’ll keep my eyes wide open, too,” Joe assured him, “and if I find out anything that will be of the slightest help I’ll let you know at once.”
But it was not of Reggie that Joe was thinking, as he hurried home through the dusk of the short winter afternoon. For he carried in his hand a big official-looking letter that bore on the upper left-hand corner the name of the New York Baseball Club.
He felt sure that it contained the contract, concerning which there had been so much speculation in the Matson home for the last few days. But eager as he was to know what it contained, he had restrained himself until he reached home, so that all could read it together.
“Here it is at last, Momsey!” he shouted, as he burst into the warm bright sitting room waving the envelope above his head.
“Oh, I’m so glad!” began his mother fondly, while Clara was across the room like a whirlwind and snatching at the letter.
“Open it up, open it up!” she pleaded. “I’m nearly crazy to know what’s in it.”
“Little girls should be seen and not heard,” teased her brother, as he held it tantalizingly out of her reach.
But she tickled him under his arm so that he dropped it with such undignified haste that she got possession of the letter, and like a flash had put the table between them.
Into the laughing group came Mr. Matson, just returned from the Harvester Works.
“What’s all the racket about?” he asked.
“Oh, Dad!” cried Clara, running to him and putting her arms about his neck. “It’s the letter from the New York Club, and it has Joe’s contract in it, and now we’ll know all about it and whether it’s for one year or three years, and——”
“It seems to me that you’re quite a prophetess, young lady,” laughed her father, as he sat down in his easy-chair and drew her to his lap, “especially as the letter hasn’t been opened yet.”
“Perhaps it’s just a note telling me that after thinking it over they don’t want me after all,” teased Joe.
“Well, now that we’re all here, suppose you settle the question by reading it,” suggested Mrs. Matson.
There was a moment of breathless suspense and it must be admitted that Joe’s hand was not quite steady as he tore open the envelope. There was a big formal document inside, and as Joe unfolded it a little blue slip fluttered out and fell to the floor. Clara was on it in an instant.
“It’s a check!” she exclaimed, with a little squeal of delight. “That looks a lot as if they didn’t want you, eh, Mr. Joseph Matson?”
It was a check for one hundred dollars to cover traveling expenses to the training camp.
Joe cleared his throat and began to read the formidable-looking document. It abounded with any number of “wherefores” and “whereases,” but the sum and substance of it was that the New York Club agreed to pay Joseph Matson the sum of four thousand five hundred dollars a year, for a period of three years from date.
Joe looked up at this point to see three shining pairs of eyes fixed upon him, although a suspicious moisture threatened to dim the brightness of those belonging to his mother and his sister.
“Four thousand five hundred dollars!” exclaimed Mr. Matson. “That’s an advance of fifteen hundred dollars over what you got last year. They certainly do things up in liberal style.”
“And that isn’t all,” cried Joe eagerly, as his eyes fell on a paragraph near the bottom of the page. “Here’s a bonus clause.”
“A bonus clause?” interrupted Clara. “What is that?”
“Something they offer as a premium if you do more than is expected of you,” explained her brother. “This says that I’ll get an extra thousand dollars if I win twenty games during the season.”
“That ought to be easy enough, I should think,” said Clara.
“Don’t you believe it,” laughed Joe. “In the first place, if it were easy they wouldn’t offer me anything extra for doing it. A pitcher is doing very well who wins two-thirds of the games he pitches. On that basis I’d have to pitch thirty games to have a chance of winning twenty. But if his old pitchers are going strong, McRae may keep me on the bench half the season and only put me in when they fall down. He’s a great one for depending on his old standbys. Then, too, I’ll be a newcomer, and perhaps the team won’t play behind me with the same confidence as when Hughson or Markwith are on the mound. That will make it harder for me to win games. You must remember, too, that all the teams on the circuit play harder against the New Yorks than they do against any other team. They take a special delight in downing the Giants before their home crowds, and they always save up their best pitchers for those occasions. So, take it altogether, there’s only a mere chance to win my twenty games during the season. I’m going to take that chance, though,” and into Joe’s eyes came a steely look that would have delighted McRae if that fighting leader of the Giants could have seen it.
The precious document was read and reread and discussed in all its bearings until Mrs. Matson insisted that supper would be stone cold if they did not come to the table at once. It is safe to say that in all Riverside that night no happier family grouped itself around the table than that in the Matson home.
“What’s the idea of the three-year clause, Joe?” asked his father, when they had fairly settled down to the meal. “Rather a compliment, I take it.”
“It is a sort of compliment,” admitted Joe. “They must feel pretty sure there’s something in me to bind themselves to pay that salary for so long a time. I didn’t really expect more than a one-year contract. Of course there’s another side to it. If I did especially well this first year, perhaps they figure I’d get a swelled head and hold them up for a big increase next year. As it is, no matter how well I do, I can’t get any more salary until the three-year period is up.
“Then too,” he went on, as he passed his plate for another helping, “there’s been a good deal of talk lately about this third big league. They’re awfully anxious to get star players so as to draw the public from the start, and the only way they can get them is to coax them away from the National or the American League. To do that they’ll have to offer enormous salaries. If I were bound for one year and the new league wanted me, they might try to get me to promise to join them as soon as my year was up. But with a three-year contract holding me, McRae won’t have to worry.”
“Those clubs must be awfully rich to tie themselves up for such an amount of money,” remarked Mrs. Matson. “Suppose a player lost his skill. Would they have to go on paying him just the same?”
“Not by a jugful,” laughed Joe. “There’s a little joker in the contract that permits the club to release a player on ten days’ notice.”
“But you can’t quit them on ten days’ notice!” exclaimed Clara. “It doesn’t seem to me that that’s fair.”
“It isn’t fair on the face of it,” admitted Joe, “but as a matter of fact, it works out pretty well in practice. In the first place, the club is crazy to get hold of good players and is only too anxious to keep them if they behave themselves and play the game. If a player gets a ten days’ notice, it’s usually because he deserves it. The club has to have some protection against careless or drunken or dissipated players, and the ten days’ notice gives it to them.
“Take it altogether, the players get a square deal,” he concluded. “They get bigger salaries than almost any of them could command in any other walk of life. They travel in Pullman cars with every luxury that the richest passenger can command. They dine and sleep in the finest hotels in the country. When they’re on the road, all their expenses are paid by the club, so that their salaries are pure velvet. Nearly half the year they have to themselves, and don’t have to work at all unless they want to. During their playing days they have plenty of time to study and prepare themselves for some profession later on. Lots of them become lawyers or dentists or prosperous business men. Some of them go on the stage and make more in a month than the average man can make in a year. Hughson of the New Yorks opened an insurance office one winter and people fairly fell over each other to do business with him. They just wanted to tell their friends that they had done business with the great Hughson.
“Oh, we poor baseball ‘slaves’ are doing pretty well, thank you,” Joe ended, with a laugh, as his hand tightened on the contract and the crisp blue check that had come with it.
The next few days flew by as though on wings. There were a hundred things to be done before Joe would set out on the long swing around the circuit that was to increase or diminish his fame, as fate might decree. Above all, he was anxious to spend all the time he could in practice, so as to report at the training camp in superb condition.
One thing that pleased him immensely was the success of the scheme he had carried through with Dick Talbot. True to his promise, Dick had been on hand at the appointed time with his camera and they had carried out the program he had suggested. Joe broke the white sheet of paper stretched between the bamboo poles so repeatedly and conclusively that only an idiot could have questioned that he had curved the ball. And it is only fair to state that when the film was reeled off before the astonished eyes of Professor Enoch Crabbe he admitted this fact.
“I have to admit that you are right, Mr. Matson,” he avowed, “and I’m sorry that I was so positive about it the other day. I shall have to study up the law that controls the curve, and by the time you come back at the end of the season perhaps I shall have found out what it is.”
“I’m sure that you can find it if anybody can, Professor,” said Joe, not to be outdone in politeness; and so the two opponents parted with increased respect for each other.
“I hear the Giants are going to train at Marlin Springs this year,” said Tom Davis, as they left the gymnasium and walked up the street together.
“Yes,” answered Joe. “McRae seems to have a liking for Texas as a place to get in condition. And he ought to know, for he’s tried almost every place on the map. He’s taken his team to Birmingham, to Memphis, to Los Angeles, and one year he didn’t go any farther south than Lakewood, New Jersey. So that if he’s finally fixed on Marlin, he must believe that it has advantages over all the others.”
“Isn’t this southern training trip a rather modern idea?” asked Tom.
“Oh, no,” answered Joe. “All the big teams have been doing it for a number of years now. I think it was old Cap Anson of the Chicagos who started the thing, in 1882. He took the team down south while all the other teams stayed in the north as usual. The result was that when the Chicagos came north they mowed down the other teams like grass and won the pennant that year without half trying. That put a flea in the ears of the other managers, and since then it has been a regular thing. It’s a mighty good thing, too, in more ways than one. It gives the manager a chance to try out all the material he has bought or drafted from the minor leagues. In the north, with so many cold and rainy days, they wouldn’t get half a chance. Then, too, there are usually plenty of good teams in the vicinity of the training grounds and the boys can get plenty of practice in regular games without the weather’s interfering. McRae, for instance, can find crack teams at Dallas and Waco and Houston that sometimes give the Giants all they want to do to win. The result is that when the boys come north they’re in crackerjack condition. They’re like so many thoroughbreds waiting for the flag to fall, and the public gets good games for its money from the very start of the season.”
“Just what time do you have to report?” asked Tom.
“In just about a week,” answered Joe. “I think I’ll start next Thursday afternoon.”
“Are you going straight to New York and go south with the rest of the team?” Tom inquired.
“I don’t think so,” was the reply. “McRae left it to me to pick out my route in any way that would be most convenient to me as long as I joined the party somewhere on the way. I think I’ll go by way of Goldsboro, North Carolina. The boys go through there, and that will be as good a place as any to meet them.”
Joe spoke with an elaborate affectation of carelessness, but he could not prevent that troublesome blood of his from flooding his face.
“Gee, Joe, but you’re red!” cried honest Tom. “You haven’t been exercising too much this afternoon, have you?”
“Not a bit of it,” returned Joe, with unnecessary emphasis. “I never felt better in my life.”
But if he could fool Tom, he could not “get away with it” with Clara, and he was subjected to an unmerciful teasing when that young lady learned of the route he had chosen.
“Goldsboro, North Carolina,” she mused. “Where have I heard that name before? Oh, how stupid of me! Of course, that is where Reggie lives. I suppose you’re awfully anxious to see him.”
But Joe was so engrossed in his packing just then that he pretended not to hear, and all her efforts to get a reply out of him, although carried out with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, ended in comparative failure.
The dreaded afternoon came at last, dreaded by all the members of the little family who were welded so closely together in heart and life. The others all went down to the train to see Joe off, and it was only the presence of a large part of the population of Riverside, who had come with a similar purpose, that kept the mother and sister from breaking down entirely at the thought of the long parting from the son and brother that they idolized. As it was, they bore up bravely, and waved their handkerchiefs with smiles that were tremulous as the train moved out of the station to the accompaniment of a storm of cheers from the crowd that packed the platform. Joe waved back, but he had eyes for only three figures in all that throng. The train rounded a curve and he was off, leaving the old home town behind him for many months to come.
The train was a local and he had to travel twenty miles before he should reach the Junction, where he was to connect with the “Flyer.” He found the latter train puffing impatiently when he arrived, and it was the work of a moment to transfer his belongings to the sleeper. He found the seat which his ticket called for and settled down for an unbroken trip to Goldsboro.
He was lost in the pleasant thoughts this name called up when the porter passed through announcing that dinner was ready in the dining car. Joe’s healthy appetite seldom had to be prodded by a second announcement, and he promptly went forward. He found a good seat facing forward, and he was soon engrossed in a careful study of the bill of fare. It proved to be all that he could ask, and he soon had a most tempting and abundant meal spread before him.
He applied himself to this conscientiously, and was half-way through the meal when a man took the seat directly opposite him. Joe gave him a passing glance and saw that he was a man rather advanced in years but who bore himself with a certain suppleness and vigor that bespoke an early athletic training. It was an honest, pleasing face he had, Joe decided, after a careless glance. Then he went on eating and forgot all about the stranger.
But the newcomer kept looking at Joe from time to time with a puzzled expression, as though he had seen him before but scarcely knew how to place him. Several times he seemed on the point of addressing the young pitcher, but checked himself. At last the impulse proved too strong for him to resist.
“Beg pardon,” he said, “but your face looks very familiar to me. Would you mind telling me your name?”
Joe looked up with quick suspicion. He had been approached more than once by oily strangers who had sought to scrape acquaintance, and he had learned to be on his guard. But there was nothing in the frank smile and candid face before him to arouse distrust, and he answered readily:
“Not the least in the world. My name is Joseph Matson.”
“Not the Matson that is going to play on the Giants this year?” asked the stranger eagerly.
“I guess I am,” returned Joe, smiling.
“That explains why your face looked so familiar!” exclaimed the other. “I’ve seen your picture in various papers twenty times in the last week. I’ve read all about you, and I’m mighty glad to meet you. My name is Wilson, and I’m an old ball player myself. In fact, I guess I was playing professional ball twenty years or more before you were born.”
“That’s a long time ago,” laughed Joe, as he took the stranger’s offered hand and shook it heartily. “What team did you play on and what was your position?”
“I played right field on the old Red Stockings of Cincinnati,” was the answer.
Joe almost jumped out of his seat.
“Not the Red Stockings, the team of 1869?” he cried. “Not the team that whipped them all, that went through the whole season without losing a single game?”
“That was my team,” was the answer given calmly, though a gleam of pride and exultation came into the stranger’s eyes as he noted Joe’s enthusiasm.
Joe was all excitement and animation. He had never dreamed that he would ever be sitting face to face with one of the famous team that swept through our country like a prairie fire and made a record that has never been equaled in the history of baseball.
“This is sure my lucky day!” he cried. “I’d willingly have traveled hundreds of miles to have a look at you and hear you talk. And here you drop right down at my table! I’ll have something to tell the rest of the boys that will make them green with envy. I give you fair warning that I’m going to keep you talking till bedtime or until I pump you dry.”
The old-time player laughed at Joe’s delight, but he would have been more or less than human if he had not been pleased by it.
“I’m afraid you make too much of it,” he said, with a deprecating wave of the hand. “You young fellows have the center of the stage just now. We old boys are the has-beens. There are only four of our old team left. All the others have crossed the Great Divide.”
“Their memory won’t die, though, as long as there is a baseball fan left in these United States,” declared Joe. “Why, there’s scarcely a ‘fanning bee’ that I’ve ever been in, but what the name of the famous old Red Stockings comes up in some way or other. They’ve left a mark upon the game that will never grow dim.”
“It’s good to hear you say so, anyway,” said Wilson. “We thought ourselves that we were ‘some pumpkins’ when we started out, especially after we’d handed a few lacings to some of the other teams, but we never thought we were going to win fifty-seven games right off the reel. We used to look at each other, as one team after the other fell by the wayside, and wonder when our turn would come. It certainly seemed a miracle that we should escape with a whole skin every time. I suppose we would have gone under toward the end of the season if our reputation hadn’t scared the other teams so that they were licked before they came on the field. As it was, the scores as a rule weren’t even close. Our tightest squeeze was when we whipped the Mutuals of New York by four to two. But the way we treated the Buckeye team was a sin and a shame,” he chuckled. “We walloped them by one hundred and three to eight.”
The veteran was getting warmed up now and his eyes flashed as he recalled the glorious exploits of his young manhood.
Just then the waiter came along and placed two checks on the table. Wilson reached for his, but Joe was too quick for him.
“No, you don’t,” he laughed, as his hand closed over both checks. “This is on me. It isn’t often that one has a chance of having a Red Stocking for a guest, and I’m going to make the most of it.”
“‘Youth will be served,’” quoted Wilson, with a smile, as he acquiesced good-naturedly.
“I hope you’re not traveling with anybody,” said Joe, as they rose to leave the table, “because if you’re not I hope to have your company for the rest of the evening.”
“I’m all by my lonesome,” returned his new friend, “and I’ll be only too glad to accept your invitation. To tell the truth, I was looking forward to a dull evening all by myself, as my eyes are not strong enough to do much reading at night.”
They made their way back to Joe’s reservation and settled themselves cozily for a long talk. They formed a dramatic contrast, if they had thought of it. On the one hand was a veteran, who, like Goldsmith’s soldier:
“Shouldered his crutch to show how fields were won,”
while Joe presented a picture of eager, ambitious youth, dreaming of coming fame and standing with shining eyes on the very threshold of achievement. But though so widely separated in years, they were one in the mystic free masonry that unites all lovers of the great national game of our country.
“We didn’t use to travel in any such style as this in the old days,” remarked Wilson, as he looked around at the rich appointments of the Pullman. “As a matter of fact, we had to scratch sometimes to get money enough to carry the team from one place to another in an ordinary day coach. Those were the days when baseball was a sport, pure and simple, and nobody thought of it as a business to make money from. Usually there were no regular salaries for the players, and they simply divided up the receipts from the different games and made them go as far as they would. Many of the games were played in open fields, where everybody could come and contribute what they liked when the hat was passed for the collection. Even when there were enclosed grounds, the admission fee was twenty-five cents or less, and except on special occasions the crowds were nowhere near as large as they are to-day. But we’d rather play than eat, and we played the game for the fun we could get out of it. And fun it was, I assure you.”
“You spoke of making over a hundred runs in a single game,” remarked Joe. “There must have been some walloping of the horsehide, and I feel sorry for the fielders that had to chase the ball.”
“They certainly got plenty of exercise,” chuckled Wilson. “Of course, the batters in those days had a big advantage over the pitchers. Nobody knew anything about curving the ball until the time of Cummings and Mathews, and instead of the ball looking like a pea as it came over the plate it was more like a balloon. The ball had no friends, and everybody took a poke at it. The batter, too, could step out of the box to reach for a ball, and they took advantage of it. If they do it today, you call them out. There was no ‘waiting out’ the pitcher in order to get a base on balls. It was a point of honor to swipe the ball for all you were worth, and the public expected you to do it.
“It was mighty hard on the fielders in the old days,” he went on, “because none of them wore gloves, and as the ball was harder and livelier than it is today, broken fingers were much more common. I’ve seen some of the old boys who had had every finger on both hands broken at some time or another. I was an outfielder and got off more easily; but I’ve had two broken fingers,” and he held up his right hand for Joe to see.
“I don’t see how the catchers got along without gloves, even if the other players did,” suggested Joe.
“Well, the pitching wasn’t as swift then as it is now,” explained the veteran. “Besides, base stealing hadn’t been reduced to the science it is today, and the catchers didn’t need to get hold of the ball in such a hurry. Moreover, a third strike was out if the catcher caught it on the first bound, so that as a rule they relied on this and stood a good way behind the plate.”
“Do you think that the game has advanced very much since the old days?” asked Joe.
“Oh, immensely!” was the generous and unexpected concession. “We didn’t know anything in the old days of the ‘inside stuff’ you set such store by today. The ‘squeeze play,’ the ‘delayed steal,’ the ‘sacrifice hit’ are all modern inventions. But when it comes to fielding, there isn’t a man to-day that could show George Wright anything at shortstop or Ross Barnes at second base. And we had batters that could give points to Wagner and Cobb.”
“I suppose you wanted to ‘kill the umpire’ once in a while, just as we do now,” suggested Joe, with a grin.
“Once in a while, but not so often,” smiled the other. “Umpiring was a mighty sight easier job then than now. The umpire used to sit in an easy chair at the side of the plate and a good distance off so that there was no danger of being hit by a thrown ball or a foul tip. But he didn’t get the big salary that the men with the indicator get today. Two or three dollars at the end of a game was considered plenty, and there were lots of times when he didn’t get even that.”
“I’ll bet you’ve seen some sparkling plays in your time,” said Joe.
“You’re just right,” agreed Wilson. “I’ve seen lots of things that took the spectators clear off their feet. One of the queerest I remember was a triple play made by an outfielder. Have you ever seen one?”
“I’ve only seen one in my life,” answered Joe. “They are pretty scarce birds and often the league goes through a whole season without one being made. And when they do happen, it’s an infielder who makes it. I don’t exactly see how an outfielder could pull it off.”
“I don’t think it has ever been done but once,” returned Wilson, “and I had the luck to be playing in that game. Paul Hines, the center fielder of the Providence Club, was the player who turned the trick.
“There were men on second and third and nobody out. The man at bat lifted a short fly into center, just back of short. It seemed a dead certainty that the ball would fall safe, and the men on bases set sail for the home plate. Hines came in like a quarter horse and just managed to catch the ball on a level with his shoe tops. In the meantime, the man on third had reached home and the man from second had rounded third and was scooting for the plate. Hines had had to run so far in that he was close to third, so he simply kept on running and stepped on the bag. That of course put out both men, who couldn’t get back to third in time, which, with the fly catch, made three out in all. It was a remarkable play, and it was a long time before the papers got through talking about it.”
“I don’t wonder,” Joe declared. “It was a case of dandy fielding and quick thinking.”
“But now tell me about yourself,” urged Wilson. “Here I’ve been running on, as old fellows will, and you’ve hardly said a word about yourself.”
“The case is different,” protested Joe. “You’re the fellow who has actually done things, and I’m the one who’s only hoping to do them.”
“You can’t tell me that,” came back Wilson. “Any man who has already had a season with the St. Louis Club in the National League and was so good that McRae made a grab for him, has already done things worth doing. I’ve seen your record, young man, and it’s a crackerjack. I’m looking for you to burn things up, when the season opens.”
“I only hope you’re right,” said Joe. “But it’s going to be a tough proposition. All the clubs have been strengthened since last season, and there isn’t one of them that can be figured as an easy mark. Chicago and Pittsburgh especially will be strong contenders, and the club that beats them out will win the pennant. I think the Giants have the best chance, but if we do win we’ll know we’ve been in a fight.”
The talk continued with such a disregard for the passage of time that before they knew it most of the berths had been made up and all the passengers except themselves were getting ready to retire. Then Wilson rose.
“My berth is in the next sleeper,” he said, as he extended his hand, “and as I reach my station at five o’clock in the morning I won’t have a chance to see you again right away. But I’ll see you play more than once this season. I hope you’ll have the best of luck and come out ahead in the race for the pennant. And I’m more glad than I can tell that I’ve run across you. With young men like you in it, the future of the game is safe.”
Joe shook hands warmly.
“The game would have gone to smash long ago if it hadn’t been for the strong foundation laid for it by famous old teams like yours,” he asserted. “As for me, I’ll never forget as long as I live that I’ve shaken hands with one of the old Red Stockings of sixty-nine.”
Joe was in high spirits after his visitor left. The chance meeting had braced him like a tonic. If he had been the least bit superstitious, he might have been inclined to look upon it as more than a coincidence.
Here he is, on his way to join the most famous team of the present. At the very start of his journey he meets a member of the most famous team of the past.
Is it an omen of coming triumph? At any rate, it is an inspiration.
That night in his sleep Joe pitched the Giants to victory!
“Only a dream,” commented Joe, as he was dressing the next morning, “and they say dreams go by contraries. Let’s hope that won’t hold true in this case. If I could only strike out Wagner on the field as easily as I did in my sleep, there’d be nothing to the race except the Giants.”
He was sorry that he could not see Wilson opposite him at breakfast as he had been at supper on the night before, but he supplemented the absence of the veteran by a newspaper which he propped up before him as he sipped his coffee. Mrs. Matson had always objected to this at home, on the ground that it was unsociable, and Joe had respected her wishes; but just now he had no one to consult except himself, and he did as he chose. Joe had a shrewd idea that all women felt the same way and resented having a rival in the newspaper. Probably Mabel herself—— But pshaw! that thought didn’t bother him. Who would want to look at an old newspaper when opposite him at the table was something so much better to look at, something that wore fetching little boudoir caps and all sorts of dainty frilly things, something with brown eyes and wavy hair, something that laughed and teased and bewitched while it poured the coffee?
“Come, old man,” Joe said to himself, “this will never do. Brace up and get on the job. Help the Giants to win the flag, get a slice of the money from the World’s Series, and then you’ll be in a position to ask the sweetest girl in the world whether she is willing to pour your coffee for the rest of her life.”
Naturally it was the sporting page that engrossed most of his attention. A great deal of space was devoted to the departure of McRae and most of the Giants from New York on their way to the grounds at Marlin for the spring training trip. Rosy predictions were indulged in as to the result of the coming season. The general opinion seemed to be that New York had a capital chance for the pennant, now that McRae had plugged up two weak places in the team, and especially because he had strengthened his pitching staff by the addition of Matson, who had done such sterling work in the box for the Cardinals the previous season.
These predictions interested Joe, but were not especially convincing. He had seen so many “good things” go wrong, so many teams strong on paper “come a cropper,” while those who were only given an outside chance by the baseball scribes came up from the ruck, that he had become an habitual resident of “Missouri,” and had to be “shown.” Moreover, this was a New York paper, and he knew that local sheets in the seven other cities of the National League were industriously trying to prove, to their own satisfaction at least, that their favorite sons could not lose.
What did have an especial interest for him, however, was an article that told of his exploit in subduing Talham Tabbs. The news had filtered out from Riverside through the columns of the local paper, and the metropolitan sporting reporter had been quick to recognize it as having all the elements of a good story. So he had featured it for all that he was worth, even introducing an imaginary picture of the madman standing on the lumber pile while Joe was in the act of hurling the ball.
Joe was amused and rather pleased, and yet he knew that the story would win him a large amount of banter from his mates.
“They’ll be joking about Matson’s ‘freeze’ ball from now to the end of the season,” he grinned. “Well, as long as it gives ‘cold feet’ to the batters I have to face, I won’t have to worry about it.”
He made a hearty breakfast and strolled back into his car, wholly at peace with himself and the world. The pleasant influence of his dream still clung around him, and then, too, every mile traversed by the “Flyer” was bringing him nearer and nearer to Goldsboro.
It is not to be hastily assumed from this that Joe was unduly anxious to meet his new team-mates. There would be plenty of time to become acquainted with them before the season closed. In fact, he would probably have a surfeit of their society.
But Goldsboro was a pleasant town, and he would have four hours to stay before the train from New York bearing McRae and his men should pull into the station.
While he had been in the dining car the train had stopped at a station and several passengers had boarded it. Joe noticed as he went to his seat that the car seemed fuller than when he had left it.
He sat looking out of the windows at the flying scenery for a while, and then, as the train boy stopped at his seat, he put his hand in his pocket for some change to buy a magazine that had an unusually attractive cover.
But as he settled back to study it, his eye, roving over the car, caught sight of something vastly more attractive.
Three seats in front of him next the window sat a girl. He could not see her face, but there was something in the tilt of the head that reminded him of Mabel.
He sat for a moment as if transfixed. The next instant he was standing before her, hat in hand, his eyes eloquent with pleasure at this unexpected meeting.
“Mabel!” he stammered.
She looked up and her face flooded with color.
“Joe!” she exclaimed delightedly. “How glad I am to see you!” And then as though she had been betrayed into saying more than she intended her face became still rosier. Joe decided on the spot that pink was his favorite color.