“I do hope you help my Joie to get thinner,” said Mrs. Grubb, when she had heard about the proposed ball nine. “He is too fat, altogether.”
“If he plays ball enough he’ll get thin,” said Tommy, with a smile.
The boys were delighted when they heard of Tommy’s success in getting permission to use the lot, and at once baseball activity began in earnest.
Several of the boys whom Teddy, Billie and Tommy’s other new friends had mentioned agreed to join, and, though there was no regular team as yet, it looked as if there would be one in a short time.
Tommy planned to hold a meeting and see if he could not raise some money, so they could buy more bats, balls, gloves and other things needed to play the game.
The first thing they did was to start work on their new diamond in Mr. Bashford’s field. It was cleared of the bigger stones, and a large flat one was picked out for home plate. Then Tommy got some barrel-heads from his cellar, nailed them together, and staked them to the ground to use for bases—first, second and third. Next, a place for the pitcher to stand was dug out, the base lines were marked by taking a hoe and cutting out some of the sod, and then the place began to look like a real diamond, though it was rather small, for the boys could not run the full length of regular bases.
“If we only had a back-stop!” exclaimed Tommy regretfully one day after school, when he and several others of his new friends were working on the field. “That’s what we need most now.”
“Can’t we build one ourselves?” asked Teddy.
“If we had the boards we might, but lumber costs money, and we haven’t hardly any left,” was Tommy’s reply.
I might explain that each of the boys had a little pocket money, and most of this was turned into a general fund. With it they bought some gloves, two new balls and a few bats.