“Congratulations, old man!” murmured Spike, as he shook Joe’s hand. “You deserve it.”
“And so do you. I wish you were going to catch.”
“I wish so, too, but maybe my chance will come later. Fool ’em now.”
“I’ll try.”
Joe had a vision of Bert Avondale, the regular scrub pitcher, moving to the bench, and for an instant his heart smote him, as he noted Bert’s despondent attitude.
“It’s tough to be displaced,” murmured Joe. “It’s a queer world where your success has to be made on someone else’s failure, and yet—well, it’s all in the game. I may not make good, but I’m going to try awfully hard!”
He wondered how his advancement had come about, and naturally he reasoned that his preferment had resulted from the words spoken in private by Mr. Hasbrook.
“I wonder if I’d better thank him?” mused Joe. “It would be the right thing to do, and yet it would look as if he gave me the place by favor instead of because I’ve got a right to have it, for the reason that I can pitch. And yet he doesn’t know that I can pitch worth a cent, unless some of the other coaches have told him. But they haven’t watched me enough to know. However, I think I’ll say nothing until I have made good.”
Had Joe only known it, he had been more closely watched since his advent on the diamond than he had suspected. It is not the coach who appears to be taking notes of a man’s style of play who seems to find out most. Mr. Hasbrook, once he found that the lad who had rendered him such a service was at Yale, and had aspirations to the nine, made inquiries of the coaches who had done the preliminary work.