The days flew rapidly by and the time drew near for the Spring trip. All the members of the team were to get a thorough trying out in actual games with the crack teams of various colleges before the regular pennant race began. Then the "weeding out" process would have been completed, and only those remain on the team who had stood the test satisfactorily. The trip was to take about two weeks, and they were to "swing around the circle" as far west as Cincinnati and as far south as Washington.

They did not expect much trouble in coming back with a clean score. As one of the "Big Three," their team was rarely taken into camp by any of the smaller colleges. They usually won, occasionally tied, but very seldom lost. Yet, once in a while, their "well-laid schemes" "went agley" and they met with a surprise party from some husky team that faced them unafraid and refused to be cowed by their reputation.

Bert's college was one of the largest and most important in the country.

The "Big Three" formed a triangular league by themselves alone. Each played three games with each of the other two, and the winner of the majority was ent.i.tled to claim the championship of the "Big Three." And it was generally, though not officially, admitted, that the team capable of such a feat was the greatest college baseball team in the whole country. Their games were followed by the papers with the greatest interest and fully reported. The "Blues," as Bert's college was usually referred to on account of the college colors, had won the pennant the year before from the "Grays" and the "Maroons," their traditional opponents, after a heart-breaking struggle, and columns of newspaper s.p.a.ce had been devoted to the concluding game. This year, however, the prediction had been freely made that history would not repeat itself.

Both the Grays and Maroons were composed of tried and tested veterans, while, as we have seen, Ainslee had been compelled to fill several important positions with new material. No matter how good this might prove to be, it takes time and practice to weld it together in one smooth machine, and it is seldom done in a single season.

Moreover, the time was at hand when Ainslee would have to rejoin his own team, and his keen eye still noted a number of rough places that needed planing and polishing. For this reason he was all the more anxious to secure good results during this trip. After it was over, he would have to turn over the team to a manager and to Reddy, the a.s.sistant coach and trainer. The manager would confine himself chiefly to the technical and financial features, but it was arranged that Reddy should have full charge of the team on the field. Ainslee reposed implicit confidence in him because of his shrewd judgment, his knowledge of men, and his vast baseball experience.

West Point was to be their first stop, and it was a jolly crowd, full of the joy and zest of living, that embarked on the steamer _Hendrik Hudson_, and sailed up the lordly river, the finest in the world, as most of the boys agreed, though some, who had traveled, were inclined to favor the claims of the Rhine to that distinction. They were disposed to envy the Dutch explorer, who, first among civilized men, had sailed up the river that bore his name and feasted his eyes upon its incomparable beauty; a delight that contrasted so strongly with the final scene when he and his little son had been thrust by a mutinous crew into an open boat on storm-tossed Arctic waters, and left to perish miserably.

The reward, as d.i.c.k cynically insisted, of most of the world's great benefactors, who have been stoned, burned, or otherwise slain by their fellows, while posterity, too late, has crowned them with laurels and honored them with monuments.

The game with Uncle Sam's cadets was a fight "for blood," as was entirely appropriate for future soldiers. In the seventh, with the cadets one run behind, one of them attempted to steal from second to third. Hinsdale got the ball down to Tom like a shot, but, in the mix-up, it was hard to tell whether the runner had made the base or not.

The umpire at first called it out, but the captain of the cadets kicked so vigorously that the umpire asked Tom directly whether he had touched him in time.

For an instant Tom hesitated, but only for an instant. Then he straightened up and answered frankly:

"No, I didn't; he just beat me to it."

It is only just to Tom's companions to say that, after the first minute of disappointment, they felt that he could and should have done nothing else. The standard of college honor is high, and when it came to a direct issue, few, if any, of the boys would have acted differently.

Even Reddy, with his free and easy views on winning games "by hook or crook," as long as you win them, felt a heightened respect for Tom, although he shook his head dubiously when the man from third came home on a sacrifice, tieing the score.

The tie still persisted in the ninth, and the game went into extra innings. In the tenth the Blues scored a run and the cadets made a gallant effort to do the same, or even "go them one better." A man was on second and another on third, when one of their huskiest batters came to the plate. He caught the ball squarely "on the seam" and sent it straight toward third, about two feet over Tom's head. He made a tremendous jump, reached up his gloved hand and the ball stuck there.

That of course put out the batter. The man on third, thinking it was a sure hit, was racing to the plate. As Tom came down, he landed right on the bag, thus putting out the runner, who had turned and was desperately trying to get back. In the meantime the man on second, who had taken a big lead, had neared third. As he turned to go back to second, Tom chased him and touched him just before he reached the bag. Three men were out, the game was won, and Tom was generously cheered, even by the enemy, while his comrades went wild. He had made a "triple play una.s.sisted," the dream of every player and one of the rarest feats ever "pulled off" on the baseball diamond.

During the trip, Winters and Benson occupied the pitcher's box more often than Bert, and it was evident that, despite Bert's showing in the early spring practice, both Ainslee and Reddy were more inclined to pin their faith this season on their tested stars than on the new recruit.

They really believed that Bert had "more on the ball" than either of the others, but were inclined to let him have a year on the bench before putting him in for the "big" games. They knew the tremendous importance of experience and they also knew how nerve-racking was the strain of playing before a crowd of perhaps twenty-five thousand frenzied rooters.

Bert _might_ do this, but Winters and Benson had actually _done_ it, and they could not leave this significant fact out of their calculations. So they carried him along gradually, never letting up on their instruction and advice and occasionally putting him in to pitch one or two innings to relieve the older men after the game was pretty surely won.

Bert was too sensible and sportsmanlike to resent this, and followed with care and enthusiasm the training of his mentors. A better pair of teachers could not have been found and Bert made rapid progress.

Something new was constantly coming up, and, as he confided to d.i.c.k, he never dreamed there was such a variety of curves. There was "the hook,"

"the knuckle," "the palm," "the high floater," "the thumb jump," "the cross fire," and so many others that there seemed to be no end to them.

But though he sought to add them all to his repertory, he followed Ainslee's earnest urging to perfect his wonderful fadeaway, and gave more attention to that than to any other.

"And to think," he said to Tom, one day, "it isn't so very long ago that people didn't believe it was possible to throw a curve ball at all and learned men wrote articles to show that it couldn't be done."

"Yes," said Tom, "they remind me of the eminent scientist who wrote a book proving, to his own satisfaction, at least, that a vessel couldn't cross the Atlantic under steam. But the first copy of the book that reached America was brought over by a steamer."

"Yes," chimed in d.i.c.k, "they were like the farmer who had read the description of a giraffe and thought it a fairy story. One day a circus came to town with a giraffe as one of its attractions. The farmer walked all around it, and then, turning to his friends, said stubbornly, 'There ain't no such animal.'"

Reddy joined in the laugh that followed and took up the conversation.

"Well," he said, while the others in the Pullman car in which they were traveling drew around him, for they always liked to see him get started on his recollections, "the honor of having discovered the curve rests between Arthur c.u.mmings and Bobby Mathews. It's never been clearly settled which 'saw it first.' Before their time it used to be straight, fast ones and a slow teaser that was thrown underhand. But even at that, don't run away with the idea that those old fellows weren't some pitchers. Of course, they were handicapped by the fact that at first they had to keep on pitching until the player hit it. The four-ball rule, and making a foul count for a hit, and all those modern things that have been invented to help the pitcher, hadn't been thought of then. Naturally, that made heavy batting games. Why, I know that the old Niagara team of Buffalo won a game once by 201 to 11."

"Yes," broke in Ainslee, "and the first college game in 1859 was won by Amherst over Williams by a score of 66 to 32."

"Gee," said Hinsdale, "the outfielders in those days must have had something to do, chasing the ball."

"They certainly did," agreed Reddy, "but, of course, that sort of thing didn't last very long. The pitchers soon got the upper hand, and then, good-by to the big scores.

"I suppose," he went on, "that the real beginning of baseball, as we know it to-day, goes back to the old 'Red Stockings' of Cincinnati, in '69 and '70. There was a team for you. George and Harry Wright and Barnes and Spalding, and a lot of others just as good, went over the country like a prairie fire. There wasn't anybody that could stand up against them. Why, they went all though one season without a single defeat. It got to be after a while that the other teams felt about them just as they say boxers used to feel when they stood up against Sullivan. They were whipped before they put up their hands. The next year they got their first defeat at the hands of the old Atlantics of Brooklyn. I was a wee bit of a youngster then, but I saw that game through a hole in the fence. Talk about excitement! At the end of the ninth inning the score was tied, and the Atlantics were anxious to stop right there. It was glory enough to tie the mighty Red Stockings--a thing that had never been done before--without taking any further chances. But Harry Wright, the captain, was stubborn--I guess he was sorry enough for it afterwards--and the game went on, only to have the Atlantics win in the eleventh by a score of 7 to 6. I've seen many a game since, but never one to equal that.

"Of course the game has kept on improving all the time. I ain't denying that. There used to be a good deal of 'rough stuff' in the old days. The gamblers started in to spoil it, and sometimes as much as $20,000 would be in the mutual pools that used to be their way of betting. Then, too, the players didn't use to get much pay and, with so much money up, it was a big temptation to 'throw' games. It got to be so, after a while, that you wouldn't know whether the game was on the level or not. The only salvation of the game was to have some good strong men organize and put it on a solid footing and weed out the grafters. They did this and got a gang of them 'dead to rights' in the old Louisville team. They expelled four of them and barred them from the game forever, and, although they moved heaven and earth to get back, they never did. And since that time the game has been as clean as a hound's tooth. As a matter of fact, it's about the only game in America, except perhaps football, that you can count on as being absolutely on the square.

"It's a great sport, all right, and I don't wonder it is called the national game. It's splendid exercise for every muscle of the body and every faculty of the brain. Rich or poor, great or small, everybody with a drop of sporting blood in his veins likes it, even if he can't play it. At the Washington grounds a box seat is reserved for the President, and I notice that no matter how heavy the 'cares of state,' he's usually on hand and rooting for the home team. Why, I've heard that when the committee went to notify Lincoln that he was nominated for President, he was out at the ball ground, playing 'one old cat,' and the committee had to wait until he'd had his turn at bat. It may not be true, but it's good enough to be."

"And not only is it our national game," put in Ainslee, "but other countries are taking it up as well. They have dandy baseball teams in Cuba and j.a.pan, that would make our crack nines hustle to beat them, and, in Canada, it is already more popular than cricket."

"I've heard," said Tom, "that not long ago they made a cable connection with some island way up in the Arctic Circle. The World's Series was being played then, and the very first message that came over the cable from the little bunch of Americans up there was: 'What's the score?'"

"Yes," laughed Ainslee, "it gets in the blood, and with the real 'dyed in the wool' fan it's the most important thing in the world. You've heard perhaps of the pitcher who was so dangerously sick that he wasn't expected to live. The family doctor stood at the bedside and took his temperature. He shook his head gravely.

"'It's 104,' he said.

"'You're a liar,' said the pitcher, rousing himself, 'my average last season was .232, and it would have been more if the umpire hadn't robbed me.'"

The train drew up at Washington just then, and the laughing crowd hustled to get their traps together. Here they played the last game of the season with the strong Georgetown University nine, and just "nosed them out" in an exciting game that went eleven innings. While in the city they visited the Washington Monument, that matchless shaft of stone that dwarfs everything else in the National Capital. Of course the boys wanted to try to catch a ball dropped from the top, but the coach would not consent.

"Only two or three men in the world have been able to do that," he said, "and they took big chances. I've had too much trouble getting you fellows in good condition, to take any needless risks."

So the boys turned homeward, bronzed, trained, exultant over their string of well-earned victories, and, in the approving phrase of Reddy, "fit to fight for a man's life." Ainslee left them at New York to join his team amid a chorus of cheers from the young athletes that he had done so much to form. From now on, it was "up to them" to justify his hopes and bring one more pennant to the dear old Alma Mater.

CHAPTER V

WINNING HIS SPURS

"Play ball!" shouted the umpire, and the buzz of conversation in the grandstand ceased. All eyes were fastened on the two teams about to enter on the first important game of the season, and people sat up straight and forgot everything else, so great was their interest in the forthcoming event.

All the games that the Blues had played up to this time had been with teams over which they felt reasonably sure of winning a victory, but the nine they had to face to-day was a very different proposition. Most of the young fellows composing it were older and had had more experience than the Blues, and the latter knew that they would have to do their very utmost to win, if win they did. The thing they most relied on, however, was the fact that their pitcher was very good, and they believed that he would probably win the day for them.

Of course, they had a lot of confidence in themselves, too, but the importance of a steady, efficient pitcher to any team can hardly be exaggerated. It gives them a solid foundation on which to build up a fast, winning team, and n.o.body realized this better than Mr. Ainslee, their veteran coach.

"Only give me one good pitcher," he was wont to say, "and I'll guarantee to turn out a team that will win the college championship."

The star on the college team this year, Winters, was, without doubt, an exceptionally good pitcher. He had considerable speed and control, and his curves could generally be counted on to elude the opposing batsmen.

He was the only son in a wealthy family, however, and, as a consequence, had a very exaggerated idea of his own importance. He was inclined to look down on the fellows who did not travel in what he called "his set,"

and often went out of his way to make himself disagreeable to them.

As d.i.c.k put it, "He liked to be the 'main squeeze,'" and he had been much irritated over the way in which Bert had attracted the coach's attention, and the consequent talk on the campus regarding the "new pitcher." He and his friends made it a point to sneer at and discredit these stories, however, and to disparage Bert on every possible occasion.

The veteran trainer had not forgotten, however, and moreover he was worried in secret about Winters. It was, of course, his duty to see that all the players attended strictly to business, and let no outside interests interfere with their training. Of late, however, he had heard from several sources that Winters had been seen in the town resorts at various times when he was supposed to be in bed, and Reddy knew, none better, what that meant.

However, he hoped that the pitcher would not force him to an open rebuke, and so had said nothing as yet. Nevertheless, as has been said, he kept Bert in mind as a possible alternative, although he hoped that he would not be forced to use him.