Baseball Joe Around the World.

by Lester Chadwick.

CHAPTER I

IN DEADLY PERIL

"Great Scott! Look at this!"

Joe Matson, or "Baseball Joe," as he was better known throughout the country, sprang to his feet and held out a New York paper with headlines which took up a third of the page.

There were three other occupants of the room in the cozy home at Riverside, where Joe had come to rest up after his glorious victory in the last game of the World's Series, and they looked up in surprise and some alarm.

"Land's sakes!" exclaimed his mother, pausing just as she was about to bite off a thread. "You gave me such a start, Joe! What on earth has happened?"

"What's got my little brother so excited?" mocked his pretty sister, Clara.

"Has an earthquake destroyed the Polo Grounds?" drawled Jim Barclay, Joe's special chum and fellow pitcher on the Giant team.

"Not so bad as that," replied Joe, cooling down a bit; "but it's something that will make McRae and the whole Polo Grounds outfit throw a fit if it's true."

Jim s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from Joe's hands, with the familiarity born of long acquaintance, and as his eyes fell on the headlines he gave a whistle of surprise.

"'Third Major League a Certainty,'" he read. "Gee whiz, Joe! I don't wonder it upset you. That's news for fair."

"Is that all?" pouted Clara, who had been having a very interesting conversation with handsome Jim Barclay, and did not relish being interrupted.

Mrs. Matson also looked relieved and resumed her sewing.

"Is that all?" cried Joe, as he began to pace the floor excitedly. "I tell you, Sis, it's plenty. If it's true, it means the old Brotherhood days all over again. It means a fight to disrupt the National and the American Leagues. It means all sorts of trickery and breaking of contracts. It means distrust and suspicion between the members of the different teams.

It means--oh, well, what doesn't it mean? I'd rather lose a thousand dollars than know that the news is true."

"But perhaps it isn't true," suggested Clara, sobered a little by her brother's earnestness. "You can't believe half the things you see in the papers."

"Will it hurt your position with the Giants, Joe?" asked Mrs. Matson, her motherly instincts taking alarm at anything that threatened her idolized son.

Joe stopped beside his mother's chair and patted her head affectionately.

"Not for a long time if at all, Momsey," he replied rea.s.suringly. "My contract with the Giants has two years to run, and it's as good as gold, even if I didn't throw a ball in all that time. It wasn't the money I was thinking about. As a matter of fact, I could squeeze double the money out of McRae, if I were mean enough to take advantage of him. It's the damage that will be done to the game that's bothering me."

"Perhaps it won't be as bad as you think," ventured his mother. "You know the old saying that 'the worst things that befall us are the things that never happen.'"

"That's the way to look at it," broke in Jim heartily. "Let's take a squint at the whole article and see how much fire there is in all this smoke."

"And read it out loud," said Clara. "I'm just as much of a baseball fan as either of you two. And Momsey is, too, after all the World's Series games she's seen played."

It is to be feared that Mrs. Matson's eyes had been so riveted on Joe alone, in that memorable Series when he had pitched his team to victory, that she had not picked up many points about the game in general. But anything that concerned her darling boy concerned her as well, and she let her sewing lie unheeded in her lap as Joe read the story from beginning to end.

"Seems to be straight goods," remarked Jim, as Joe threw the paper aside.

"They've got the money all right," rejoined Joe. "They've got two or three millionaires who are willing to take a chance and put up the coin."

"One of the names seems to be rather familiar," remarked Jim, with a sidewise look at Joe. "Do you remember him?"

"I remember him," replied Joe grimly, "but I'd bet a dollar against a plugged nickel that he remembers me better yet."

"Who is it?" asked Clara with quickened interest.

"Beckworth Fleming," replied Joe.

"Rather a pretty name," remarked Mrs. Matson absently.

"Prettier than he was when Joe got through with him," interposed Jim with a grin.

Mrs. Matson looked up, shocked.

"Oh, I hope Joe didn't hurt him!" she exclaimed.

"Whatever Joe did was for the good of his soul," laughed Jim. "I can't say as much for his body."

"It's all right, Momsey," smiled Joe. "He was insolent to Mabel, and I had to give him a thrashing. But that's neither here nor there. He's the spoiled son of a very rich man, and he's one of the men behind this new league. 'A fool and his money are soon parted,' and he'll probably be wiser when he gets through with this than he is now."

"But why shouldn't they start a new league if they want to?" asked Mrs.

Matson. "I should think they had a right to, if they wanted to do it."

"Of course they have a right to," agreed Joe. "This is a free country, and any man has a right to go into any legitimate business if he thinks there's money in it. Neither the National League nor the American League have a mortgage on the game. But the trouble is that there aren't enough good players to go round. All the really good ones have been already gobbled up by the present leagues. If the new league started in with unknown players, it wouldn't take in enough money to pay the batboys. The consequence is that it tries to get the players who are already under contract by making them big offers, and that leads to all sorts of dishonesty. You take a man who is making three thousand a year and offer him six if he'll break his contract, and it's a big temptation."

"They'll be after you, Joe, sure as shooting," remarked Jim. "It would be a big feather in their cap to start off with copping the greatest pitcher in the game. They'd be willing to offer you a fortune to get you. They figure that after that start the other fellows they want will be tumbling over themselves to get aboard."

"Let them come," declared Joe. "I'll send them off with a flea in their ear. They'll find that I'm no contract jumper."

"I'm sure that you'd never do anything mean," said his mother, looking at him fondly.

"There isn't a crooked bone in his head," laughed Clara, making a face at him as he threatened her with his fist.

"The contract is enough," said Joe; "but even if I were a free agent, I wouldn't go with the new league and leave McRae in the hole. I feel that I owe him a lot for the way he has treated me. He took me from a second-string team and gave me a chance to make good on the Giants. He took a chance in offering me a three-year contract in place of one. I'm getting four thousand, five hundred a year, which is a good big sum whatever way you look at it. And you remember how promptly he came across with that thousand dollars for winning twenty games last season."

"We remember that, don't we, Momsey?" said Clara, patting her mother's hand.

"I should say we did," replied Mrs. Matson, while a suspicious moisture came into her eyes. "Will we ever forget the day when we opened that letter from the dear boy, and the thousand-dollar bill fell out on the table? It gave us all the happiest time we have had in all our lives."

Jim, too, mentally blessed that big bill which had brought the Matson family to witness the World's Series games and so had enabled him to meet Joe's charming sister. Perhaps that vivacious young lady read what was pa.s.sing in his mind, for her eyes suddenly dropped as they met Jim's eloquent ones.

Joe flushed at this reference to his generosity, and Clara was quick to cover her own slight confusion by rallying her brother.

"He's blushing!" she declared.