“I hope so,” replied Joe. “I never gave out so suddenly before. Up to that inning everything was moving like clockwork. Then in a moment the arm went limp.”
“Perhaps you’ve been overworking a trifle,” suggested Robbie. “That no-hit game the other day may have taken a lot out of you. If I were you, I’d have Dougherty give the arm a good massage this afternoon. That will probably put it in fighting trim again.”
It was a very quiet Joe who walked home with Jim that afternoon after Dougherty had outdone himself in a vigorous treatment of his pitching arm.
“Snap out of it, old man,” urged Jim, as he noted his comrade’s depression. “You’ve just had a bad day. Most twirlers get something like that once a month or oftener. You have it less than once a year, and here you are as glum as a funeral. You can’t expect to be working miracles all the time.”
“It isn’t that, Jim,” explained Joe. “Of course I feel as sore as the mischief to have had this thing happen. But I hope I’m enough of a philosopher to stand for a setback now and then.”
“Well, then, if it isn’t that what is it that’s making you so downcast?”
“Just this,” replied Joe. “I was wondering if possibly this trouble to-day mightn’t be due to the burns I got in that fire down at the training camp.”
“Forget it,” counseled Jim, though Joe’s words had stirred up a certain uneasiness in his own mind. “You don’t have to find any special reason for having a bad day in baseball. You’ve just been a little off, and that’s all there is about it. The next time you go into the box you’ll have them standing on their heads as usual.”
A new turn was given to their thoughts when they entered the hotel and their eyes fell on a fashionably dressed young man who had evidently just preceded them and was handing his suitcase to a bellboy.
“Reggie, by all that’s lucky!” cried Joe, rushing up to his brother-in-law and shaking his hand warmly while Jim grasped with equal warmth the unoccupied hand.