“You did,” admitted Joe, adding with a frown as they turned to leave the place together: “You think the responsibility for this contemptible trick can be traced to Hupft or McCarney then?”
“Who else?” returned Jim. “It was somebody else who actually sent the telegram, of course, but I’d be willing to stake my hat that the scheme originated with one or the other of them.”
“Well,” drawled Joe, with a glint in his eye that boded no good for either McCarney or Hupft or any of their gang, “it seems to me it’s time there was some housecleaning done on this lot.
“And now,” he added, as his gaze traveled joyfully out to the field, “we’re going to show those Bostonians how ball should be played!”
To say that Joe made good his boast would be to understate the facts in the case.
From that time on he set the side down with the ease and precision of a machine. The Bostons came up to the bat like so many automatons, made futile swings at the ball, and went back growling to the bench. And in the eighth, when, the score still stood 3 to 1 in favor of Boston, Joe lammed out a mighty three-bagger that brought home three of his comrades who had filled the bases. That made the score 4 to 3 in the Giants’ favor, and so it remained when Joe struck out the last Boston batsman in the ninth.
It was a glorious triumph for Joe—two triumphs in fact, for he had not only beaten the Bostons, he had thwarted the dastardly plot of his enemies.