“Quite some class to those Trinity School lads,” remarked Tom. “It’s a swell place—a lot of millionaires’ sons go there I understand.”
“Yes, but I hobnobbed with some of ’em, and they weren’t a bit uppish. Right good fellows, I thought.”
“Oh, yes, all millionaire lads aren’t cads though money sometimes makes a chap that way. Trinity must be quite a school.”
“I guess it is, but Excelsior is good enough for me. We’re in with a dandy crowd of fellows, though, and that makes it nice if you’ve got to play a lot of games with ’em. Nothing like class when it comes to sport. We ought to have some corking good games this Summer.”
“I only wish you and I were more in it,” went on Tom.
“Wait until we see about the scrub,” suggested him chum. “I’m not worrying as much as I was at first.”
But, though Joe thus lightly passed over the matter, deep down in his heart there was a great longing. To him baseball meant more than to the average player. From the time when he had seen his first game, as a little chap, our hero had fairly lived, eaten and slept in an atmosphere of the diamond. He had organized a team of lads when he was scarcely nine years old, and played those little chaps in a sort of improvised circuit.
Then, as he grew, and developed, and found that he could pitch, the world seemed to hold something worth while for Joe Matson. “Baseball Joe,” he had been dubbed, when as a small chap he shouldered his bat and started off across the lots to a game, and “Baseball Joe” he was yet.
How he longed to be on the regular nine, even in the outfield, none but himself knew. And when he dreamed of the possibility that he might some time occupy the pitching mound—well, he had to stop short, for he found himself indulging in a too high flight of fancy.
“Get back to earth, Joe,” he told himself. “If you want to pitch for Excelsior you’ve got to do a heap of waiting, and you are pretty good at that game.”