“I’m not going to do much talking, fellows,” he said. “McRae has already told you that I’m to be captain of the team. I’m proud to be captain of such a bunch. I feel that all of us are brothers. We’ve been comrades in many a hard fight, and there are lots of such fights ahead of us. But all our fighting will be done against the other fellows and not among ourselves. I’m counting on every one of you to go in and work his head off for the good of the team. That must be the only thing that counts with any of us.
“I don’t want to exercise a single bit of authority that I don’t have to. But I’m not going to fall down on my job if I can help it. If I have to call a man down, I’ll call him down. While we’re out on the field, what I say will have to go. You may think it’s right or you may think it’s rotten, but all the same it will have to go. But you’ll understand that there’s nothing personal and that whatever’s done is for the good of the team. You know I’d rather boost than roast, and that I’ll praise a good play just as readily as I’d blame a bad one. Now how about it, fellows? Are you with me?”
“We’re wid ye till the cows come home!” shouted Larry, enthusiastically. “Three cheers for the new captain!”
Rousing cheers shook the clubhouse and sealed the compact.
Then, with a new spirit, the Giants plunged into the pennant fight. It was a hard fight that lay before them, and none of them underrated it. But the grim determination that had been in evidence many times previously was now again to the fore, and it boded ill for their rivals.
Mabel, after a tender parting, had returned for a brief while to Goldsboro, and Joe concentrated all the energies of brain and body on his new task. Like the war horse, he “sniffed the battle from afar,” and was eager to plunge into the thick of the fray. Would he emerge the winner?
Baseball Joe, for the time being, gave no more attention to Iredell’s grouchiness. He knew the player felt sore, but never realized how far that soreness might carry the fellow.
“I’ll fix him some day, see if I don’t,” muttered Iredell to himself when on his way to the hotel that night. “I’ll fix him. Just wait and see! I’ll teach him to ride over me!”