The newspapers the next day devoted a vast deal of their space to the game, dwelling especially upon Joe’s brilliant work in the box and at the bat. It could be seen between the lines what a universal sense of relief the metropolis felt at the demonstration that their favorite, despite the accident of the training season, was in superb shape, and predictions were confidently made that the Giants were in for another championship.
Joe would not have been human if he had not taken pleasure in the praise that had been so honestly earned. But far more gratifying than the plaudits of the press and public was the telegram that came from Mabel, telling him how proud she was of him and how relieved she was to know that he suffered no bad effects from the rescue at the fire.
His own heart sang with exultation for the same reason. For deep down had been the lurking fear that when it came to the real test the doctors’ verdict might prove erroneous. And what that would have meant to him he scarcely dared to think.
The Giants repeated the next day with Jim in the box. Grimm opposed him and pitched a rattling game. But Jim pitched a still better one and the Giants won by a score of 6 to 2. And when Young Merton turned in another victory the next day it began to look as though the Giants would make a clean sweep of the series. But Markwith was unsteady in the fourth game and the Giants had to be resigned to taking the short end of the 7 to 4 score.
Still, three out of four from the most formidable of the eastern competitors was a thing not to be despised and formed an auspicious beginning for the season, and when they swept the boards with the Phillies, taking four games in a row, Giant stock took a further bound upward.
But Baseball Joe was too wary a campaigner to draw unjustified conclusions from a good beginning. He knew that a team could play like champions one week and like “bushers” the next. Seven games out of eight sounded good, to be sure. But the season was young and he knew that no such percentage could be maintained throughout the hundred and fifty-four games that the schedule called for.
“The real test is yet to come,” he remarked to Jim as they were discussing the prospects. “I’ll feel a good deal clearer in my mind after we’ve tried out the western teams. That’s where the real strength of the league lies. Take the Pittsburgh, the Chicagos, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds. Those birds are the ones that will keep us hustling. Any of them is liable to take the bit in its teeth and run wild. If we can swing around the western circle and do a little better than break even on the trip, we can fatten up our percentages on the eastern clubs.”
“Let’s hope our first trip West won’t be such a frost as it was last year,” observed Jim. “Gee, how they tied the can to us! Soaked us right and left, knocked us down and then picked us up and knocked us down again. Made doormats of us. Walked all over us. Remember how we sneaked back into New York at the end of the trip hoping nobody would recognize us?”
“I remember, all right,” grinned Joe. “And the memory of it ought to keep us from being too chesty when we meet those birds again. But we’re a stronger team now than we were then and I don’t believe we’ll be easy meat for anybody on our next trip.”