“It was Hughson’s game after all,” protested Joe. “It was his magnificent pitching that held them down to one run up to the ninth. All I had to do was to hold them there.”
“Of course we know what Hughson is,” said McRae, “but we weren’t quite so sure what you would be when brought face to face with a pinch. All I ask you to do is to keep up the way you’ve started.”
Joe would not have been human if he had not felt jubilant at these words of praise from the head of the team. But it did not make him lose his head. He knew that the same tongue that gave him credit now would be quite as ready to “skin him alive” if he failed to do his best. If “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” Joe knew that it was also the price of success in his chosen profession. No baseball player can rely on the great things he did yesterday. He must be prepared to do them today and tomorrow also. The same public that today had overwhelmed him with applause might in a few days be demanding that he be taken out of the box. And knowing this, Joe resolved that he would never give less than the very best that was in him. He would have his bad days—every pitcher has—but it would never be from lack of trying.
But whatever the future might have in store for him, today at least was his. The honey of success was on his tongue and it was very sweet. He had made good in his first game in the metropolis. In the words of Robson, he had “got off to a running start.”
He whistled blithely as after his shower and rubdown, he got into his clothes and, accompanied by Jim, passed out into the street.
[CHAPTER XXII]
A HOT CAMPAIGN
“Well, Joe, the Giants trimmed the Braves good and proper,” chuckled Jim, for the twentieth time referring to the thing that loomed largest in the minds of both.