The nine was a typical one, such as is found in many country towns, though they played good ball. After an upward struggle Joe was made pitcher, and helped to win some big games. He made many friends, and some enemies, as all boys will.
In the second volume, called “Baseball Joe on the School Nine,” I told how our hero and his chum, Tom Davis, went to Excelsior Hall, a boarding institution just outside of Cedarhurst, about a hundred miles from Riverside.
At school Joe found that it was more difficult to get a chance at his favorite position than he had imagined it would be. There, too, he had his enemies; but Joe was a plucky fighter, and would not give up. How finally he was called on to pitch in a great game, and how he, more than anyone else, helped to win the Blue Banner, you will find set down in my second book.
Three years passed, all too quickly, at Excelsior Hall, with Joe doing the twirling for the school nine at all the big games. And now, with the coming of Fall, and the beginning of the new term, he was not to go back, for, as I have intimated, he was to be sent to Yale University.
The course at Excelsior Hall was four years, but it was found that at the end of the third Joe was able to take the Yale entrance examinations, which he had done successfully. He did not enter with flying colors, for Joe was no great scholar, but he was by no means at the foot of the ladder.
So he was to plunge at once into the turmoil of university life—his one regret being, as I have said, that he could not join the ranks of the professional baseball players. But he was willing to bide his time.
Another regret, too, was that he would be very much of a stranger at Yale. He did not know a soul there, and he wished with all his heart that Tom Davis could have gone with him, as he had to Excelsior Hall. But Tom’s parents had other views of life for him.
“It doesn’t seem like three years ago that I first started for Excelsior,” mused Joe, as he drove along. “I sure was nervous then, and I’m in a worse funk now. Well, there’s no help for it. I’ve got to stick it out. No use disappointing dad and momsey. I only hope I make out half way decently.”
His errand accomplished, he drove back home, arriving rather late, and, to his mother’s anxious inquiries as to what kept him, he related the happening of the broken carriage.
“And you don’t know who he was?” asked Clara, Joe’s sister, curiously.