“Then I’m really going to pitch?” asked Joe. It was almost the only thing he had said since hearing the announcement, after Spike had clapped him on the back with such force.
“Pitch! Of course you’re going to pitch,” declared the head coach. “And I want you to pitch your head off. But save your arm, for there are going to be more games than this. But, mind!” and he spoke with earnestness. “You’ve got to make good!”
“I will!” exclaimed Joe, and he meant it.
“Come over here,” suggested Shorty. “Plug in a few and we’ll see if you’re as good as you were yesterday,” for Joe and he had had considerable practice, as, in fact, had all the pitchers, including Weston. As for that lad, when he heard the announcement a scowl shot across his face, and he uttered an exclamation.
“What’s the matter?” asked De Vere, who had become rather intimate with Ford of late.
“Matter! Isn’t there enough when that—when he pitches?” and he nodded his head toward Joe.
“Why; do you think they’ll get his goat, or that he’ll blow, and throw the game?”
“He might,” sneered Weston, “but I have a right to be on the mound to-day. I was half promised that I could pitch, and now, at the last minute, they put him in. I’m not going to stand for it!”
“It’s a sort of a raw deal,” declared his friend. “I don’t see why they let such fellows as he come to college. First we know there’ll be a lot of hod-carriers’ sons here instead of gentlemen,” and De Vere turned up, as far as possible, the point of his rather stubby nose. He himself was the son of a man who had gotten his start as a contractor, employing those same “hod-carriers” at whom the son now sneered.