Won in the ninth

by Christy Mathewson

Now baseball was the game which Jerry Harriman liked above all others. He liked best to see it played and to play it himself, and so when he came to make up his list of scholarship prizes he gave the baseball fellows the best of it. He was then and still is a real “fan.” He loved to see new stars developed on the diamond.

He thought it was the best and squarest game in the world and he wanted his boys, as he called all college boys, to love and play the game. Therefore he had always offered four scholarships in baseball, one for the leading pitcher, one for the leading infielder, one for the leading outfielder and batter, and one for the best all-round infielder and batsman.

Naturally, having been the baseball champions for so long, the Lowell nine generally got most of these scholarship prizes and it was very pleasing to Mr. Harriman to see his old college secure so many of them.

The talk around the University wherever the students gathered often came around to these scholarship prizes, especially as the time for baseball approached.

Fellows like Jenkins, Larke, Everson and other of the older fellows, some of whom had won them in years past, would bring up the subject when they noticed any of the young freshmen around, just to get them to thinking about it, and a good many youngsters had developed an ambition to try for a scholarship and some of them to win one, just from hearing these older fellows talk. And generally these talks would turn from a discussion of the records of winners of the prizes to the most thrilling performances of the individual stars.

The day of the first meeting in the cage called by Hughie, to give him a chance to look over the candidates for the team, was the first time that Case and Hagner had been present at one of these talks.

Hughie had given a general talk about the game and had talked with each of the candidates, asking various questions, such as “what position do you play?” “Can you bat? Can you pitch?” etc. After they had all thrown the ball around for an hour, just playing catch so that Hughie could notice the way the different fellows threw and swung, they sat around gossiping with each other, nobody wanting to go home, when one of the older fellows would say something about the Scholarship Prizes.

Generally there was some one present who didn’t know the details and this offered a chance to tell all about the prizes.

In this case it was Hagner, who had been at school only a few weeks, and all he knew about the prizes was what Case had been able to tell him. After Everson had finished explaining the prizes fully the talk, as usual, drifted on to the wonderful records of the prize winners of the past. Not that sensational catches or such other stunts as unassisted triple plays would in themselves secure one of the prizes, for they would not.