“If you make it,” said Bert incredulously. “As though it wasn’t a dead certainty.”
“Not a bit of it,” protested Dick, seriously. “You never can tell from year to year. You can’t live on your reputation at college. There may be a regular Hal Chase among the new recruits, and he may win the first base position over me without half trying. It’s a good thing it is so, too, because we have to keep hustling all the time or see somebody else step into our shoes. The result is that when the team is finally licked into shape by the coaches, it represents the very best the college can turn out. It’s a fighting machine that never knows when it is whipped and never quits trying until the last man is out in the ninth inning.”
“Yes,” broke in Tom, “and that’s what makes college baseball so much more pleasing than the regular professional game. The fellows go at it in such deadly earnest. It is the spirit of Napoleon’s Marshal: ‘The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders.’ The nine may be beaten, but not disgraced, and, when the game is over, the winning team always knows that it has been in a fight.”
“Well,” said Bert, as the fellows rose to go, “if we do make the team, it won’t be through lack of trying if we fail to land the pennant.”
“No,” laughed Dick. “Our epitaph at least will be that of the Texas cowboy,
“‘He done his blamedest—angels can no more.’”
A week later, the three friends—for Tom and Mr. Hollis had won his father over—stood on the deck of a Sound steamer, saying goodby to those who had come to see them off. Mr. Hollis wrung Bert’s hand, just as the last bell rang and he prepared to go down the gangway.
“Good luck, Bert, and whatever else you do, don’t forget to touch second.”
He smiled at Bert’s puzzled expression, and added: “I mean, my boy, be thorough in all you do. End what you begin. Don’t be satisfied with any half-way work. Many a man has made a brilliant start, but a most dismal finish. In work, in play, in the whole great game of life—touch second.”