“Don’t do it. Bat wouldn’t like it a bit, old man. Bat’s peculiar that way. Tell you what you might do, though. You might sort of hint something of the sort to Sam. Sam wouldn’t mind it, I guess. I believe I’d do that, Joey, some time before long. As I’ve previously remarked, something’s just got to be done about Mr. Foley if we don’t want him to cop that bet we made.”
“I don’t see,” said Joe innocently, “how that interests me any. I didn’t bet with him.”
“Why, you—you—you ungrateful chump!” exclaimed Jack. “Do you mean to say that you’re going to leave me in the lurch? Didn’t you agree to oust Frank from first base? Didn’t you——”
“No, I didn’t,” Joe laughed. “That was your idea entirely. Besides, what would I get out of it? You couldn’t cut that bat-case in half, could you?”
“I’ll let you use it on Sundays,” replied Jack generously.
Joe pondered for several days the plan of confiding to Sam Craig his desire to become a first baseman. Once he got his courage almost to the sticking-point, but a troublesome conviction that Sam would think him “fresh” held him back. And then, before he again reached the determination to take the plunge, events made it unnecessary.
During the last half of April, Amesville played three games, one with Grammar School on a Thursday and two with outside teams of no great importance. In the Grammar School contest High School was again easily victorious, although the score was somewhat more even than in the first meeting. The Grammar School pitcher who had been so unmercifully drubbed came back strong and proved rather a hard nut to crack, holding High School to eight hits for a total of twelve bases in the seven innings he pitched. The score at the end was 8 to 3. The team journeyed to Sinclair one Saturday and played the high school team there, winning easily, with Tom Pollock pitching five innings and Toby Williams four, by the tune of 11 to 5. On the last Saturday of the month Corby High School came to Amesville and was walloped 14 to 6, Carl Moran presiding on the mound for eight innings and pitching very good ball until a tired arm threatened to bring his downfall, and Tom Pollock was hurried to the rescue.
Every afternoon, save when an outside team was to be played, the First Team and Scrubs came together and some very close, hotly-contested battles ensued. Oddly enough, Joe’s first opportunity to show what he could do as a first baseman found him playing with the Scrubs. One afternoon the Scrubs’ regular first baseman was missing and when its shortstop got mixed up at second with Sidney Morris and was helped off the field with a badly-wrenched knee, the Scrubs’ coach, a high school graduate named Meyers, was in a quandary and was forced to borrow a player from the First. The choice fell on Joe, and as Joe was a stranger to the shortstop position Meyer put his third baseman there, transferred his first baseman to third, and put Joe at first. Joe was rather too nervous during the first inning to make much of a showing, but, fortunately, Carl Moran, who was pitching for the Scrubs, held the First fairly tight and Joe was able to get by without anything worse than a doubtful error when he failed to get a wide throw in time to make the out. But in the succeeding innings, five in all, he covered the bag in a style which opened Mr. Talbot’s eyes and brought good words from his friends. If he did not have the reach that Frank Foley had, he was so much quicker than that other youth that he quite made up for the fact, while at bat he was easily the superior of that player. Joe did not, however, greatly distinguish himself with the stick that afternoon, for Tom Pollock pitched the whole six innings for the First, and Tom, when he tried, could hold any fellow on the team helpless. Still, Joe did do better than any other member of the Scrubs, getting two hits, one of the scratch variety, as his earnings. The First Team nosed out of the game with a two-run lead, but had to work hard that day for their victory.
The result of Joe’s exhibition with the Scrubs that afternoon was that two days later he was substituted for Foley in the fifth inning of a game with the Second Team, much to Foley’s surprise and, I fancy, disgust. Again he got through creditably, although a poor heave from Buster Healey got past him on one occasion and led him in the subsequent confusion to himself make a hurried and ragged throw to third. But the misplay did not appear in the results and he more than atoned with two stops that brought applause from the stand and the benches and by lacing out a two-bagger in the fourth inning that sent two runs across.