Collin flashed a look of mingled scorn and triumph on Joe as he walked past him. It needed only this to make our hero feel that he had stood about all he could, and he turned away, and tried to get rid of a lump in his throat.
None of the other players seemed to notice him. Probably it was an old story to them. Competition was too fierce—it was a matter of making a living on their part—every man was for himself, in a certain sense. They had seen young players come and old players go. It was only a question of time when they themselves would go—go never to come back into baseball again. They might eke out a livelihood as a scout or as a ground-keeper in some big league. It was a fight for the survival of the fittest, and Joe’s seeming failure brought no apparent sympathy.
Understand me, I am not speaking against organized baseball. It is a grand thing, and one of the cleanest sports in the world. But what I am trying to point out is that it is a business, and from a business standpoint everyone in it must do his best for himself. Each man, in a sense, is concerned only with his own success. Nor do I mean that this precludes a love of the club, and good team work. Far from it.
Nor were Joe’s feelings made any the less poignant by the fact that Collin did some wonderful pitching. He needed to in order to pull the home team out of the hole into which it had slipped—and not altogether through Joe’s weakness, either.
Perhaps the other players braced up when they saw the veteran Collin in the box. Perhaps he even pitched better than usual because he had, in a sense, been humiliated by Joe’s preference over himself. At any rate, whatever the reason, the answer was found in the fact that Pittston began to wake up.
Collin held the other team hitless for one inning, and the rest of the game, ordinary in a sense, saw Pittston march on to victory—a small enough victory—by a margin of two runs, but that was enough. For victory had come out of almost sure defeat.
Poor Joe sat on the bench and brooded. For a time no one seemed to take any notice of him, and then Gregory, good general that he was, turned to the new recruit and said:
“You mustn’t mind a little thing like that, Joe. I have to do the best as I see it. This is business, you know. Why, I’d have pulled Collin out, or Tooley, just as quick.”
“I know it,” returned Joe, thickly.
But the knowledge did not add to his comfort, though he tried to make it do so.