CHAPTER XXXVBOSTON WANTS ITS REVENGE.

CHAPTER XXXVBOSTON WANTS ITS REVENGE.

A good many Yale men returned to New Haven after the boat race at New London. The college year was over, it was true, but there was still plenty to do around the old college town, and Yale men are particularly loyal to the campus. They hate to go away, especially in the pleasant warm days of June. Packing for the trip home for the long vacation is made to consume several days, as a rule, and there were odds and ends of various tasks to be completed.

The last weeks of the spring term had been so eventful, and so thoroughly filled with exciting athletic events, that Jim Phillips, the newly elected varsity baseball captain, and a number of his friends, found that they had no choice about returning.

So they were there, in Jim’s rooms in York Street, when the little gathering was thrown into a state of pleasurable surprise by the entrance of Dick Merriwell, the universal coach, under whose tutelage Yale teams had just completed the greatest year of athletic triumphs in the history of the college.

“I see you can’t keep away,” he said, laughing. “It is a hard place to get away from. I’ve found that out a good many times before any of you ever came here to college at all.”

“I thought you were going up to Maine,” said Bill Brady. “That was what we heard after the boat race.”

“So I am,” said Dick. “But that’s later. There’s a whole lot to be done yet before I can get up there. Things that won’t keep. My business up in Maine will do very well when I get back from Stockholm.”

Jim Phillips sat up in sudden interest, and Bill Brady groaned comically.

“Were you serious in what you said at New London, Mr. Merriwell?” asked Jim. “Is there really a chance for some of us to get taken to Sweden on the Olympic team?”

“There’s a good deal more than a chance,” said Dick. “It’s rapidly becoming a matter of sheer patriotism for some of us to go. America has won every Olympic meet that has been held, you know, since the first revival of the old games at Athens in eighteen-ninety-six. That was the first time our athletes ever were taken seriously on the other side. They thought the little team we sent over for that meet was a joke. No one regarded us as serious competitors for the Englishmen. But we beat them there; we beat them in Athens again in nineteen-six, as we did in Paris in nineteen hundred, and you all know how our fellows cleaned up the meet in London in nineteen-eight.”

“Tempest, of course, we all expected to go,” said Harry Maxwell, who was strictly out of Olympic discussions. He was a good baseball player, but not in line for any track or field events.

“I know Tempest is the best sprinter in America,” said Dick, “and I’m inclined to think that he’s the best short-distance runner, up to the quarter mile, in the world. But there are several men here who can do good work. You, Brady, ought to shine in the hammer-throwing event. Jim, I expect you to try for the broad jump, certainly, and perhaps for some other events. And I think I’ll go into training myself.”

Dick Merriwell was no longer eligible to compete for Yale, but that he was out of college did not at all bar him from the Olympic games. Jim and some of the others had forgotten that fact. They were so used to regarding Dick as the master coach that they were likely to forget that this knowledge of all sorts of sports had been gained by active practice of them. He was a practical expert, as well as a master of theory.

“I say,” said Brady, sitting up, “I guess those Swedes are going to learn a few things about American athletics, even this year. What?”

“It’s going to be a mighty close meet,” said Dick. “The Anglo-Saxon race has been at the top of the heap a long time, but some of the other nations are beginning to wake up. They’ve got a fine jumper in Germany; the Swedes have great long-distance runners, and you want to remember that an Italian won the half-mile race at the last meet. Another Italian won the Marathon, but he was disqualified, too. This isn’t going to be a dual meet between England and America by a good deal. It will be a whole lot more.”

The talk continued along these lines for a few minutes. Then Dick Merriwell spoke up again.

“I didn’t come in to talk about the Olympics, though,” he said. “There’s time enough for that. But there’s something a lot nearer home. I was noncommittal about this matter the other day when you asked me about it, but now I am going to tell you all about it. You fellows may remember that we had a game here a while ago between the New Haven Country Club and the Boston Athletic Association, in which Jim Phillips pitched. Well, the Boston people weren’t very keen about taking their licking without trying to come back at us, and they’ve challenged for another game. They’ve got practically the whole Harvard team as members, and Briggs and Bowen will be their battery. They think it would be interesting if another game was arranged, with as many Yale players as possible playing for New Haven. It would really, if their desires were met, be practically another Harvard-Yale game.

“I promised to see what could be done, and the country club people appointed me to act as captain of a team, if it could be picked. I may play myself—I haven’t played a real game of ball for some time. What do you say?”

The suggestion met with an enthusiastic response.

“You fellows never will let well enough alone,” said Woeful Watson, bound to be pessimistic. The idea that his classmates and friends were enthusiastic over any idea was enough to set Watson against it. “You licked them once. Now they’re asking for another chance, when they’ll know what they’re up against, and you’re all ready to give it to them. Foolish, I call it.”

But they were far too accustomed to Watson’s peevish ways to be even disturbed, much less influenced, by his croaking. Instead, all the baseball players there began at once discussing the arrangements for the game.

“I’m delighted to have another chance with Briggs,” said Jim Phillips. “The first game, up at Cambridge, was all right, but there was a lot of luck about the way we won that second one, down in New York. I’d like to run up against Briggs some time when conditions were exactly right.”

“I don’t mind playing baseball,” agreed Brady. “But this talk about throwing the hammer or putting the shot gets on my nerves. I think I’ll fake when it comes to the trials, and then they won’t have me, anyhow.”

“Come off, you old faker!” said Jim affectionately. “You know you’ll work your head off, when it’s a case of doing something for the flag. That’s even bigger than a chance to work for Yale. Only a few of us in this country are Yale men, after all, but we’re all Americans; and in these days, when war’s going out of fashion, games are the only means of keeping up the old international rivalries.”

“That’s true,” said Dick Merriwell, “and it shows that we’re really getting civilized. In the old days, when a nation’s blood got hot, the way it’s bound to, sometimes, the only way of letting off steam was for a lot of people to go out and kill a lot of other people they didn’t have any grudge against at all. Now they send their picked men, and race or jump with the other people, and it’s all settled in a friendly way. I think the peace funds ought to be used in promoting international athletics. The one thing that’s done more than anything else to reduce interest in prize fighting is the spread of all sorts of amateur athletics.”

“You’re not opposed to boxing, are you, Mr. Merriwell?” asked Harry Maxwell, who knew that the universal coach was himself an expert boxer, and had taught Jim Phillips nearly, if not all, that the pitcher knew about the art of self-defense.

“Not to boxing, no,” said Dick, with a smile. “But I’m opposed to a good many phases of modern prize fighting. I think every boy who is to grow up into a manly, healthy man ought to learn to use his fists. But he ought to learn to fight without losing his temper, and to take a licking, when he gets it, in the right way.

“Professional boxing is all right, too, when it is carried on in the right way. But nowadays there is too much thinking about the money and the moving pictures. The game has been brutalized, too, and it ought not to be allowed when it is not properly controled by the State or city government.”

“About this game,” said Jim Phillips. “If you play, Mr. Merriwell, you will pitch, I suppose?”

“No,” said Dick, “I’d rather leave that to you, Jim. My arm may be all right still, but I haven’t had much practice of late, and I think I’d rather see you and Briggs fight it out again. Sherman has sailed for Europe with his family, so there will be a hole to fill at first base. I think I can play that position still, and that will do very well for me.

“You and Brady will be the battery; Carter will play third; Jackson second; Green, of the country club, who was on the team here a few years ago, short; Maxwell, Brayson, and Tuthill, of the country club, in the outfield. That will give us a first-class team, I think, and I doubt if the Boston people can put a better one in the field. I’ll telegraph Bowen to-night that we can play. We ought to have neutral grounds, I think, and the New Haven league team will let us use their park.”

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