“Not on your life!” replied Joe emphatically. “The minute a man’s satisfied he starts to go back. He may not know it, but he’s sliding all the same. I’ll never be satisfied as long as I am in the game. If I strike out eight men, I’ll be sore because I didn’t make it ten. If I make a base hit, I’ll kick myself because it wasn’t a double, a three-bagger, or a homer.”
“That’s the way I like to hear a man talk,” came in a hearty voice from behind him, and Joe turned to see McRae, the veteran manager of the Giants, who had led his men to more championships than any other in either league. “Put that spirit in your men, Joe, and we’ll just breeze through to another flag this year.”
“Sure as shooting,” chimed in Robson, the fat, rubicund coach and assistant manager, who had come up with McRae and whose closest friend he had been since they had played together on the famous old Orioles. “It’s that spirit or the lack of it that makes or breaks a team.”
“I’ll do my best,” replied Joe, who was not only the star batter and pitcher of the team, but its captain as well. “I’ve got a lot of good material to work with,” he added, as he looked with pride at his men who were batting out flies and grounders and shooting the ball around the bases in practice.
“Yes,” admitted McRae thoughtfully, “it seems to me that we’ve plugged up the weak spots on the team pretty well. We’re stronger at short, for one thing. Young Renton is developing fast and plays with his head as well as his hands. Mechanically, he’s not as good yet as Iredell was, but he can play rings about him when it comes to brain work.”
“He’s a comer, all right,” affirmed Joe confidently.
“Then, too, that exchange we made of Wheeler for Ralston was a good one, I think, even if we did have to throw in a lot of coin in addition,” went on McRae. “That boy can certainly lam the ball, and he has added strength to our outer garden.”
“His coming has given us the strongest outfield in the league, bar none,” replied Joe. “Ralston is a little hard to manage, but he’s there with the goods all right.”
“Jackwell and Bowen ought to be worth more to us than they were last year,” mused McRae.
“They’re championship material,” declared Joe. “They got off on the wrong foot last year. That Texas oil trouble had them buffaloed a good deal of the time. But now that that’s off their mind, they’re going along like a house afire. Jackwell’s a regular Jerry Denny at third, and Bowen is gobbling up everything that comes his way in center. They’re slamming them out with the stick too.”