Third Base Thatcher

It was the last minute of play. The score stood 14 to 14. The teams of ’25 and ’26, the Freshman and Sophomore classes of Pennington Institute, were in a mad scramble on the gym...

The mood lasted. Jeff Thatcher said very little as he went to the coat-room adjoining the dining hall and discarded his street clothes for the white coat of a waiter, for Thatch...

Dr. Livingston’s words, with their uncomfortable portent kept racing through Jeff Thatcher’s mind as he sat in his room in Carter Hall. He knew all that this would mean to him....

Both Jeff and Wade spent a restless night. Jeff lay awake until long after the clock in the Congregational church tower across the river in New City boomed the hour of midnight,...

Fortune and Boss Russell favored Jeff Thatcher. When he appeared at half past ten that night in the _Freeman_ office the city editor was in a quandary over the illness of two me...

Jeff knew where track sixteen was and it did not take him long to find the wrecking train. There it was on a siding with a clear way to the main track. It was a train of caboose...

Jeff noticed that “Ol’ Ed” was proceeding to fulfill Tim’s predictions with a will. The wrecking train was gathering speed with every passing second. The clank of rail joints as...

A half dozen men swarmed over the wreck in the wake of the burly boss and Jeff went along with them. It was rough going over the mass of débris, and the tangle of iron and wood...

But if the journey downward called for caution, the climb back made care even more imperative. Jeff had to hope that each timber he stepped upon would bear double his own weight...

It was long after daylight when Jeff, heavy eyed and weary to the point of exhaustion, staggered out of the Erie terminal at New City and stumbled toward a trolley car that woul...

Jeff had often seen Mr. Davidson on the streets of New City and on the few occasions when he had been in the Third National Bank for some reason or another, but except for the t...

“Boss” Russell was waiting for Jeff when, a little later than his usual hour for reporting, he appeared in the editorial rooms of the _Freeman_. There was a smile on the usually...

First call for baseball material at Pennington Institute brought out a strange and interesting group of boys all eager to make the team. They ranged all the way from sub-freshme...

Indoor practice was not new to Jeff Thatcher. He had had a great deal of it for two successive seasons with the New City Y. M. C. A. team and he knew all about its limitations a...

Every fellow in the locker room realized that Pell had been breaking a rule,――a very strict rule, and while none of them approved of this and in their hearts felt that he deserv...

With the beginning of the outdoor season baseball practice at Pennington took on an entirely different atmosphere. In the first place the squad was increased to more than twice...

That Saturday afternoon game was the first of a series of five inning games between the Penningtons and the Penguins that extended over a period of just one week; the first week...

But Wade’s hope was not realized. Jeff and Rabbit Warren and Cas Gorham were among the substitutes whose names appeared on the bulletin board with the regular team the next morn...

But Jeff never made the suggestion to Hoffman and the other Sophomore friends he knew intimately, first of all because he thought it was a rather delicate matter to handle witho...

The Custer School at East Hampton always put a snappy and thoroughly aggressive ball team in the field and Pennington always arranged to crowd that game past the middle of its s...

The question of whether there was to be a game or not was long debated that morning by the Custer School authorities. The fire had created no end of excitement at the school and...

Spring swung swiftly onward toward June and the finals,――the examinations toward which every fellow in the school had been looking forward since mid-year with a certain amount o...

“Of all the rotten, crooked tricks, this is the worst I have ever heard of, sir,” he exclaimed. “Now I know why that book was not in my pocket where I put it and where I knew it...

The days immediately preceding the final examinations were long dreary days of hard work and very little time for thoughts of baseball for Jeff or any of the other fellows at Pe...