“Luck was against us,” ventured Larry. “It sure was against us.”
“Luck, nothing!” exclaimed Curry. “We simply fell down, and fell down hard. The whole League is laughing at us. Look at the way the other Eastern teams held up their end. The Brooklyns copped ten games, the Bostons got eleven, and the Phillies pulled down seven. We ought to sneak back into New York on a freight train instead of riding in Pullmans.”
“I guess there won’t be any band at the station to meet us,” remarked Joe. “But after all, any team is liable to have a slump and play like a lot of dubs. Let’s hope we’ve got all the bad playing out of our systems. From now on we’re going to climb.”
“That’s the way to talk,” chimed in Jim. “Of course we can’t deny that we’ve stubbed our toes on this trip. But we know in our heart that we’ve got the best team in the League. We’ve got the Indian sign on all of them. The fans that are roasting us now will be shouting their heads off when we get started on our winning streak. Remember, boys, it’s a long worm that has no turning.”
There was a general laugh at this, and the spirits of the party lightened a little. But not all of the gloom was lifted.
The prediction that their reception in New York would be rather frosty was true. Such high hopes had been built on the result of this trip that the reaction was correspondingly depressing. And what made the Giants feel the change of attitude the more keenly was the fact that while they had been doing so poorly, the Yankees at home had been going “like a house afire.” They had taken the lead definitely away from the Clevelands, and it did not seem as though there was any team in their League that could stop them. New York was quite sure that it was going to have one championship team. But it was quite as certain that it was not going to have two. That hope had gone glimmering.
Both teams were occupying the Polo Grounds for the season, while the new park of the Yankees was being completed. The schedule therefore had been arranged so that while one of the teams was playing at home the other was playing somewhere out of town.
Thus on the very day the Giants reached home the Yankees were starting out on their trip to other cities. They went away in the glory of victory. The Giants came home in the gloom of defeat.
The change of sentiment was visible in the first home game that the Giants played. On the preceding day, at their last game, the Yankees had played before a crowd of twenty-five thousand. The first game of the Giants drew scarcely more than three thousand. Many of these were the holders of free season passes, others, like the reporters, had to be there, while the rest were made up of the chronic fans who followed the Giants through thick and thin. There was no enthusiasm, and even the fact that the Giants won did not dispel the funereal atmosphere.
And then the Giants began to climb!