"He's all right," whispered Rad in an aside to Joe. "One of the best reporters going, and he always gives you a fair show. If you make an error he'll debit you with it, but when you play well he'll feature you. He's been South with the team a lot of times, I hear."
"But I don't like to talk about myself," objected Joe.
"Don't let that worry you!" laughed Rad. "Notoriety is what keeps baseball where it is to-day, and if it wasn't for the free advertising we get in the newspapers there would not be the attendance that brings in the dollars, and lets us travel in a private car. Don't be afraid of boosting yourself. The reporters will help you, and be glad to. They have to get the stuff, and often enough it's hard to do, especially at the training camp."
In some way or other, Joe never knew exactly how, Dalrymple managed to get a story out of him, about how Joe had been drafted, how he had begun playing ball as a boy on the "sand lots," how he had pitched Yale to victory against Princeton, and a few other details, with which my readers are already familiar.
"Say, this'll do first rate!" exulted the reporter, as he went to a secluded corner to write his story, which would be telegraphed back to his daily newspaper. "I'm glad I met you!" he laughed.
Dalrymple was impartial, which is the great secret of a newspaper reporter's success. Though he gave Joe a good "show," he also "played up" some of the other members of the team. So that when copies of the paper were received later, they contained an account of Joe's progress, sandwiched in between a "yarn" of how the catcher had once worked in a boiler factory, where he learned to catch red-hot rivets, and how one of the outfielders had inherited a fortune, which he had dissipated, and then, reforming, had become a star player. So Joe had little chance to get a "swelled head," which is a bad thing for any of us.
The first part of the journey South was made in record time, but after the private car was transferred to one of the smaller railroad lines there were delays that fretted the players.
"What's the matter?" asked Manager Watson of the conductor as that official came through after a long stop at a water tank station, "won't the cow get off the track?" and he winked at the players gathered about him.
"That joke's a hundred years old," retorted the ticket-taker. "Think up a new one! There's a freight wreck ahead of us, and we have to go slow."
"Well, as long as we get there some time this week, it will be all right, I reckon," drawled the manager.