It was snappy work all around. Tom Shay, the coach, nodded approval, and the boys grouped on the bench and along the top of the stone wall behind it voiced applause.
Sam Phillips, who had been pitching to “Ducky Drake,” the substitute catcher, pulled off his glove and squeezed himself into a seat on the bench. “Gus is playing good ball this spring, isn’t he?” he observed, his gaze on the second baseman. “I guess, though, he is still wondering how that ball got into his mitt!”
“Chesty” Harris, the manager, stopped snapping the elastic on his score-book and smiled. “Turnbull won’t have everything his own way, Sammy. Steve Grady is going to push him hard for second.”
“Steve’s not so bad,” answered Sam gravely. “The only trouble with Steve is that he’s a Towner.”
“Huh!” Harris gave the elastic band an indignant snap. “You wait until next Saturday and see what the Towners will do to you chaps!” Sam simulated surprise.
“Say, you’re a Towner, too, aren’t you, Chesty? My word, I’d forgotten that! You seem such a smart, decent sort of chap that one sort of forgets your—your degradation!”
A murmur of laughter greeted this sally. Repartee not being the baseball manager’s strong point, he retorted by digging his elbow forcibly into Sam’s ribs.
“That’s all right, but you wait and see the way we’ll do you Boarders up! We’ve got the dandy team this year, all right! Turnbull on second, Mort Prince to pitch, Coolidge at short——”
“Where are you going to play?” asked Sam innocently.
“Oh, you run away,” muttered Chesty, amid laughter. Harris’s efforts to make the team and his final acceptance of the managership, proffered him as a combined reward for his efforts and consolation prize, was a school joke. Chesty was good-natured and could stand any amount of “ragging.”