AFTER THE BATTLE.
To say that the town of Catalpa was very deeply mortified by this latest and most signal defeat of the favorite Nine would be a mild way of putting the case. For weeks afterwards, nothing was talked of in the place but the disgraceful overthrow of the Catalpa Nine. Very soon, so high did the debate run, there were two sides formed among the townspeople, one party blaming the Catalpas for their lack of training and practice, and the other excusing them for their evident inability to cope with the sturdy farmer boys from "down the river."
"I tell you it is not mere brute muscle that our fellows want," said Squire Mead, one of the great lights of the town, "it's not brawn, but skill, that they must acquire before they can stand up against the base ball players of this part of the country. Let them pay more attention to work, and less to frills, and they will come out all right."
But Dr. Selby, whose son was one of the rising players in the less aristocratic Dean County Nine, would have none of this sort of argument. Tom Selby was not only a wiry and agile player in the field, but he was the best oarsman on the river, and he could lift a barrel of flour, properly slung, "without turning a hair." He had done it often. His father believed in muscle.
"Now there's Bill Van Orman, the Dean County Nine's catcher," Dr. Selby would say, "who is like an ox in appearance, and I really believe could stave in the panel of that door with one blow of his fist, but who gets about the bases as spry as a cat, and who has got down the curve to such a fine point that nobody can pitch like him in half a dozen counties. Sam Ellis, the champion pitcher of the Jonesvilles, cannot hold a candle to Van's pitching. And do you pretend to tell me that any light-waisted young fellow, like Will Sprague, for instance, could ever, by all the training in the world, make such a catcher or such a pitcher as Bill?"
It was the old question over again—skill against muscle. But Judge Howell, whose opinions on all subjects whatever commanded respect, probably gave voice to the average public judgment when he said, "What we want, gentlemen, is muscle and training. I am confident that in this good town of Catalpa there are more than nine young men who can give time to the practice necessary for the purpose, and who are endowed by nature with the requisite powers for the development of first-rate base ball players."
"Good for you, Jedge!" It was Tony May, an aged and disreputable loafer in the store where this debate was taking place, who spoke. Tony was usually called "Rough and Ready" because of his frequent use of that phrase as applied to himself. Having applauded the Judge's remark, he drew back, a little confusedly, and murmured "'Scuse me, Jedge, I didn't mean to be interruptious, but you know I'm rough and ready, rough and ready, Jedge, and that 'ere remark of yourn does seem to be about the fust sensible thing I've hearn in this 'ere jag of words. 'Scuse me, Jedge, fer sayin' so; you know I'm rough and I'm ready." And the speaker subsided into a corner pulling his 'coonskin cap down over his shaggy brows.
Judge Howell, with an additional stiffness perceptible in his manner, waved his hand towards the dry goods boxes in the angles of which "Rough and Ready" had dropped and said, "Our friend here is enthusiastic. He has a right to be. His son Fremont has certainly distinguished himself, before now, as the right fielder of the Dean County Nine. But does anybody know if that handsome young Irish lad, Larry Boyne, could be drawn from the Jonesville Nine, in case we should desire to reinforce our home nine by drafts on foreign material, so to speak?"