Chapter 25

IN NEW YORK

"That's good," called Rad, as he caught a swift one. "You'll do, Joe."

But only the young pitcher knew what an effort it was going to cost him to stay in that game. And stay he must.

It was time for the Cardinals to take the field. The Phillies were two runs ahead, and that lead must be cut down, and at least one more tally made if the game were to be won.

"Can we do it?" thought Joe. He felt the pain in his arm, but he ground his teeth and muttered: "I'm going to do it!"

The play started off with the new pitcher in the box. The news went flashing over the telegraph wires from the reporters on the ground to the various bulletin boards through the country, and to the newspaper offices. Baseball Joe was pitching for the Cardinals.

But Joe was not thinking of the fame that was his. All he thought of was the effort he must make to pitch a winning game.

Fortunately for him three of the weakest batters on the Phillies faced him that inning. Joe knew it, and so did the catcher, for he did not signal for the teasing fadeaway, for which Joe was very glad.

Joe tried a couple of practice balls, but he did not slam them in with his usual force, at which the man in the mask wondered. He had not heard of Joe's lame arm, and he reasoned that his partner was holding back for reasons best known to himself.

"Ball one!" yelled the umpire when Joe had made his first delivery to the batter. Joe winced, partly with pain, and partly because of the wasted effort that meant so much to him.

"The next one won't be a ball!" he muttered fiercely. He sent in a puzzling curve that enticed the batter.

"Strike one!"

"That's better!" yelled Boswell, from the coaching line. "Serve 'em some more like that, Joe."

And Joe did. No one but himself knew the effort it cost him, but he kept on when it was agony to deliver the ball. Perhaps he should not have done it, for he ran the chance of injuring himself for life, and also ran the chance of losing the game for his team.

But Joe was young--he did not think of those things. He just pitched--not for nothing had he been dubbed "Baseball Joe."

"You're out!" snapped the umpire to the first batter, who turned to the bench with a sickly grin.

Joe faced the next one. To his alarm the catcher signalled for a fadeaway. Joe shook his head. He thought he could get away with a straight, swift one.

But when the batter hit it Joe's heart was in his throat until he saw that it was a foul. By a desperate run Russell caught it. Joe pitched the next man out cleanly.

"That's the way to do it!"

"Joe, you're all right!"

"Now we'll begin to do something!"

Thus cried his teammates.

And from then on the Phillies were allowed but one more tally. This could not be helped, for Joe was weakening, and could not control the ball as well as at first. But the run came in as much through errors on the part of his fellow players as from his own weakness.

Meanwhile the Cardinals struck a batting streak, and made good, bunching their hits. The ending of the eighth inning saw the needed winning run go up in the frame of the Cardinals, and then it was Joe's task to hold the Phillies hitless in their half of the ninth.

How he did it he did not know afterward. His arm felt as though someone were jabbing it with a knife. He gritted his teeth harder and harder, and stuck it out. But oh! what a relief it was when the umpire, as the third batter finished at the plate, called:

"You're out!"

The Cardinals had won! Joe's work for the day was finished. But at what cost only he knew. Pure grit had pulled him through.

"Say, did you pitch with that arm?" asked Boswell in surprise as he saw Joe under the shower in the clubhouse later.

"Well, I made a bluff at it," said Joe, grimly and gamely.

"Well, I'll be Charlie-horsed!" exclaimed the trainer. "Say, you won't do any more pitching for a week! I've got to take you in hand."

Of course the story of Joe's grit got out, and the papers made much of how he had pitched through nearly a full game, winning it, too, which was more, with a badly hurt arm.

"But don't you take any such chances as that again!" cried Manager Watson, half fiercely, when he heard about it. "I can't have my pitchers running risks like that. Pitchers cost too much money!"

This was praise enough for Joe.

And so he had a much-needed rest. Under the care of Boswell the arm healed rapidly, though, for some time, Joe was not allowed to take part in any big games, for which he was sorry.

Whether it was the example of Joe's grit, or because they had improved of late was not made manifest, but the Cardinals took three of the four games with the Phillies, which made Manager Watson gleeful.

"They called us tail-enders!" he exulted, "but if we don't give the Giants a rub before the end of the season I'll miss my guess!"

The Cardinals were on the move again. They went from city to city, playing the scheduled games, winning some and losing enough to keep them about in fifth place. Joe saw much of life, of the good and bad sides. Many temptations came to him, as they do to all young fellows, whether in the baseball game, or other business or pleasure. But Joe "passed them up." Perhaps the memory of a certain girl helped him. Often it does.

The Cardinals came to New York, once more to do battle with the redoubtable Giants.

"But you won't get a game!" declared Manager McGraw to "Muggins" Watson.

"Won't we? I don't know about that. I'm going to spring my colt slab artist on you again."

"Who, Matson?"

"Um," said the manager of the Cardinals.

"Um," responded the manager of the Giants, laughing.

St. Louis did get one game of a double-header, and Joe, whose arm was in perfect trim again, pitched. It was while he was on the mound that a certain man, reputed to be a scout for the Giants, was observed to be taking a place where he could watch the young pitcher to advantage.

"Up to your old tricks; eh, Jack?" asked a man connected with the management of the Cardinals. "Who are you scouting for now?"

"Well, that little shortstop of yours looks pretty good to me," was the drawling answer. "What you s'pose you'll be asking for him."

"He's not for sale. Now if you mentioned the centre fielder, Jack----"

"Nothing doing. I've got one I'll sell you cheap."

"I don't suppose you want to make an offer for Matson; do you?" asked the Cardinal man with a slow wink.

"Oh, no, we've got all the pitchers we can use," the Giant scout responded quickly. It is thus that their kind endeavor to deceive one another.

But, as the game went on, it might have been observed that the Giant scout changed his position, where he could observe Joe in action from another angle.

"Didn't see anything of Shalleg since we struck Manhattan; did you, Joe?" asked Rad, as he and his chum, taking advantage of a rainy day in New York, were paying a visit to the Museum of Natural History.

"No," replied Joe, pausing in front of a glass case containing an immense walrus. "I don't want to see him, either. I'm sure he planned to do me some harm, and I'm almost positive that some of his tools had to do with my sore arm. But I can't prove it."

"That's the trouble," admitted Rad. "Well, come on, I want to see that model of the big whale. They say it's quite a sight."

The rain prevented games for three days, and the players were getting a bit "stale" with nothing to do. Then the sun came out, the grounds dried up and the series was resumed. But the Cardinals were not very lucky.

Philadelphia was the next stopping place, and there, once again, the Cardinals proved themselves the masters of the Quakers. They took three games straight, and sweetened up their average wonderfully, being only a game and a half behind the fourth club.

"If we can only keep up the pace!" said the manager, wistfully. "Joe, are you going to help us do it?"

"I sure am!" exclaimed the young pitcher.

There was one more game to play with the Phillies. The evening before it was scheduled, which would close their stay in the Quaker City, Joe left the hotel, and strolled down toward the Delaware River. He intended to take the ferry over to Camden, in New Jersey, for a friend of his mother lived there, and he had promised to call on her.

Joe did not notice that, as he left the hotel, he was closely followed by a man who walked and acted like Wessel. But the man wore a heavy beard, and Wessel, the young pitcher remembered was usually smooth-shaven.

But Joe did not notice. If he had perhaps he would have seen that the beard was false, though unusually well adjusted.

Joe turned his steps toward the river front. It was a dark night, for the sky was cloudy and it looked like rain.

Joe just missed one ferryboat, and, as there would be some little time before the other left, he strolled along the water front, looking at what few sights there were. Before he realized it, he had gone farther than he intended. He found himself in a rather lonely neighborhood, and, as he turned back a bearded man, who had been walking behind the young pitcher for some time, stepped close to him.

"I beg your pardon," the man began, speaking as though he had a heavy cold, "but could you direct me to the Reading Terminal?"

"Yes," said Joe, who had a good sense of direction, and had gotten the "lay of the land" pretty well fixed in his mind. "Let's see now--how I can best direct you?"

He thought for a moment. By going a little farther away from the ferry he could put the stranger on a thoroughfare that would be more direct than traveling back the way he had come.

"If you wouldn't mind walking along a little way," said the man eagerly. "I'm a stranger here, and----"

"Oh, I'll go with you," offered Joe, good-naturedly. "I'm not in any hurry."

Be careful, Joe! Be careful!