On the days that Joe was not in the box he took the place in the field of either Curry or Bowen, according to which one of them was going the better with the bat. In this way the hitting strength of the Giants was vastly increased, for his batting eye had never been keener and he was crashing out the hits with great regularity.
Doubles and triples again and again cleared up the bases and almost every other day he ripped out a homer.
“Guess you’re going to hang up that record you spoke about at the beginning of the season,” said Jim one day, shortly after their return from the western trip. “All you’ve got to do is to keep up your present gait and no one else will have a look in. And that goes not only for our league, but for the American as well. Already you’ve made a dozen more homers than Kid Rose of the Yankees, and the gap is getting wider all the time.”
“Knock wood,” grinned Joe, as he tapped three times on the table. “Perhaps the jinx is listening.”
It seemed as though the jinx was, for on the very next day Joe’s arm went bad again and Markwith had to be called on to finish the game.
“Remember what I said about the jinx,” Joe reminded his chum. “He’s on the job again.”
“Just an off day,” pooh-poohed Jim. “You’ve got to remember that Napoleon sometimes lost a battle. You can’t win always.”
Three days later the Giants moved to Boston and Joe pitched one of his old-time games, winning with ease. He took the first game and repeated in the fourth.
They moved on to Philadelphia, and here again Joe lived up to his reputation. He was simply invincible. But in Brooklyn he once more fell down.
“Singular thing, isn’t it?” he remarked to Jim, “that I can go like a house afire the minute we get away from the city, but go bad again as soon as I get back.”