CHAPTER IXIN THE BASEBALL CAGE
The High School building stood by itself in the centre of a block in the newer residence district of Amesville. It was a handsome structure of mottled, yellow-brown brick and sandstone, four stories in height. On the top floor was a large hall used for meetings and for morning drill. When, some six years before, the building had been planned those in charge of the work had believed that in providing that hall and supplying it with a modest amount of gymnastic paraphernalia they were providing liberally and for all time. To their surprise, no sooner was the building occupied than demands came for additional contrivances, and no sooner had those demands been satisfied than that troublesome body, the Alumni Association, put forth a plea for a baseball cage in the basement! It was over a year before the cage materialised, and another year before shower-baths and lockers were installed, but at the time of our story those things were long-established facts and youthful Amesvillewas deriding the cage as too small and the shower-baths as out of style!
The basement of the school building was but half underground, and numerous windows supplied light on one side and one end of the cage. But in February the days were still short and the light did not last long, especially when, as on the fifteenth, the sun was hidden by dull clouds. Since, however, the first week of baseball practice was confined to setting-up exercises and dumb-bell work, light was not of great consequence.
Exactly thirty-two boys reported that afternoon at a quarter to four in the cage. Of this number some fourteen or fifteen were holdovers from last season’s First and Second Teams, fellows like Sam Craig, “Buster” Healey, Sidney Morris, Toby Williams, Gordon Smith, and Jack Strobe. Tom Pollock was not present, since his duties at the store in which he was employed frequently kept him from participation in preliminary work. The coach, Mr. Talbot, was a wide-awake-looking man of some twenty-eight years, a former high school player and now a lawyer who, in spite of a growing practice, found time every year to take the baseball players in hand. Today Mr. Talbot gathered the candidates together and spoke energetically and to the point.
“I’m sorry not to see more candidates,” he said. “Some of the fellows think that they can keep away until we get outdoors and then report. Well, they can, but I give them fair warning that they will find themselves handicapped. This indoor work isn’t designed just to keep you fellows out of mischief in the afternoons. It’s real stuff. It’s important. You can’t go out on the field and make any sort of a showing if your muscles are bound. That’s what this indoor practice is for, to limber up your muscles, train your eye, get your brain working. Some few of you have been playing hockey, and that’s good preparation for what’s ahead, but most of you haven’t done a thing since last Fall and your muscles are tied up in knots. First thing, then, is to get so you can use them without hurting them, and so, before you touch a baseball or a bat, you’ll have a week—maybe two—of setting-up drill and dumb-bell exercises, and, now and then, a run outdoors when the ground gets in shape. It isn’t interesting, I know, but it’s necessary, and every one of you can help yourself a lot if you’ll keep in mind all the time that what you’re doing you’re doing for a purpose and not just to pass the time. When you stretch a muscle I want you to keep your mind on that. Don’t merely go through themotions thinking about the moving picture show you saw last night or wondering how soon you’ll get through. Put your mind on what you’re doing. Say to yourself, ‘I’m flexing these muscles to make them strong and supple.’ It will tell later on. If you don’t believe me, ask the fellows who have tried it before. Now I’ll ask you to form in lines across the floor, just as you do upstairs for morning drill. That’s the idea. I guess most of you know the drill. Those who don’t will watch me and learn it. All right, fellows. Attention!
“I can see that a good many of you don’t know the position called for. It’s the position of the soldier. I supposed you learned that in morning drill. Heels on a line, now, and close together, and feet turned out at an angle of forty-five degrees. Knees straight, but not locked. Stand straight from the hips. Put your shoulders back, arching your chest a little. Let your arms hang naturally, elbows back, hands slightly to the rear of the trousers seam. Some of you look as if you were frozen. Get out of it! Ease up! You, third from the left in the second row, relax a little. That’s better. Now, then, heads erect, chins in, eyes ahead. There you are. Probably some of you are finding the position a bit uncomfortable,which shows that you need just the exercise you’re going to get here. First exercise, fellows. Remaining at attention, bend the head back as far as it will go and then forward. Exercise! One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight! Attention! Now, from side to side, keeping the neck muscles tense. First to the right as far as you can comfortably go and then to the left. Exercise! Right—left—right—left—right—left—right—left! Attention!
“Keep your stomach in, Williams. That’s better. Second exercise, fellows. Raise your arms in front of you, palms down. Now stretch them sidewise, turning the palms up, keeping the muscles tense always. Exercise! One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight! Attention! Now relax the muscles and swing the arms backward and forward like this. Exercise!... Now your shoulders. Muscles tense. Move them forward, then up, then back, then down into position again. Get that? Try it. Exercise! One—two——”
And so it went for thirty minutes, until, in spite of numerous brief intervals of rest, more than half of those present were out of breath and aching in all sorts of unaccustomed places! Joe, for one, had never realised that he had somany muscles in his body as were called into play this afternoon! The exercises ended with the body-lift while lying face-downwards, and by that time even the more seasoned of the candidates were ready to quit. Mr. Talbot viewed the flushed faces with satisfaction.
“That’s all for today. Tomorrow we’ll try more. After that we’ll use the bells. Now give your names to Mifflin—Oh, he isn’t here? Well, I’ll take them. After that get under the shower and don’t stand around too much. It’s easy to take cold when your pores are open. Tomorrow we’ll start promptly at four. Try not to be late, please. Names, now.”
So it went every afternoon for a week. A half-dozen more martyrs joined the squad in that space of time. Gradually some of the first exercises were eliminated from the programme and the dumb-bell drill took their place. That dumb-bell work certainly gave surprising results, as Joe confided to Jack one evening as they hurried from school to the Adams Building. “I can turn my wrists in all sorts of ways,” laughed Joe. “They’re beginning to feel as if they didn’t have any bones in them!”
“A few days ago I felt as if I didn’t have anything but bones,” replied Jack. “We’re almostthrough with this business, thank goodness. If the weather is all right about Saturday morning you’ll see us loping across the landscape, Joey. Bat is foxy about that.” Jack chuckled. “He always has a press of business when it comes to taking a hike!”
“So would I if I was coaching,” laughed Joe. “Wonder if he wouldn’t like me to stay behind and help him!”
“Ask him! I dare you to!”
Jack’s prediction proved right. On Thursday of that week the weather turned warm and windy and the ground, which had been like a wet sponge, dried so that it was possible to set foot to it without going in to the ankle. Sam Craig took charge and, lightly attired, the squad followed him over the better part of a two-mile journey that led across fields and over walls and, finally, back to town by the road. They alternated walking with jogging, but there was no let-up save for some five or six fellows who gave out before the romp was over. On the following Monday the first baseball appeared in the cage, and after a short setting-up drill and a brief session with the wooden dumb-bells the candidates were lined up on opposite sides of the cage and the ball was passed from side to side.
“Swing your arms, fellows,” instructed the coach. “Act as though you were going to throw the ball over the building. Get all your muscles into play. Don’t hurry it, Smith. Slow and easy. That’s the idea. I want you all to get so you can put the ball squarely into the next fellow’s hands without making him move out of place for it.”
Later two more balls were started going, and then the idea was to pass back and forth as quickly as possible, trying to catch the other fellows unawares. That was fun, and the cage was soon ringing with laughter. Mr. Talbot, taking his place at one side of the floor, enjoyed it as much as any of them. A few days after that the battery candidates were given a half-hour to themselves and practice for the rest began at four-fifteen. Occasionally Tom Pollock reported and pitched to Sam Craig or to Jack Speyer, who was slated as Sam’s understudy. With Tom in the pitching practice were Toby Williams and Carl Moran. Toby Williams was an able substitute for Tom, but Moran, who was only sixteen, had a lot to learn. Joe frequently went early to the cage and watched the pitching staff at work, and his admiration for Tom Pollock increased vastly as he noted the ease and certainty withwhich that youth shot the ball into Sam Craig’s waiting glove.
Batting practice began about the first of March. A net was stretched near the further end of the cage and the candidates took turns facing either Williams or Moran; infrequently, Tom Pollock. They were supposed to merely tap the ball, but sometimes they became over-eager and the sphere would go crashing into the iron netting at the other end of the cage and the pitcher, arising from the floor, would pathetically request the batters to “Cut out the slugging!”
One or two of the early volunteers dropped out of the squad for one reason or another and their places were taken by newcomers. By the first week in March, at which time, if the spring was a normal one, they usually got out of doors, the baseball candidates were in hard and fit condition. Already Coach Talbot was able to form a fairly correct idea of the possibilities of most of the forty-one or -two fellows who now comprised the squad. George Mifflin, the manager, was custodian of a mysterious book, in which, opposite the various names, was set down much interesting information which the fellows would have given much to read. In this, at Bat’s command, Mifflin set down each day little marks and figuresafter the names, memoranda practically understandable by Bat alone. Now and then came one of those cross-country jaunts—there were five of them that season—and now and then the squad was taken outside, where the footing was not too soft, and allowed to throw and catch. But with these exceptions, no outdoor work was indulged in until the second week in March, for on the fifth a miniature blizzard swept down the valley, undoing the good work performed by a fortnight of mild weather and drying winds. That blizzard had a lot of harsh things said about it. It was probably as unpopular a visitation of snow and sleet and ice and, subsequently, rain and slush as ever visited Amesville! But there was nothing for it but to wait for better conditions and, in the meanwhile, continue the drudgery of indoor practice, a drudgery that had grown distasteful to everyone by this time.
Joe firmly believed that the work in the cage had done him a lot of good, even aside from the matter of physical conditioning. He had found that he could meet the ball in front of the batting net and roll it across the floor about as often as most of the fellows, and he was perhaps more impatient than any of them to get out on the turf and discover whether his hitting ability hadreally improved. Jack, himself a clever batter, predicted that Joe was destined to become one of the team’s best hitters that Spring.
“You’ve got it all over ‘Handsome Frank’ already,” Jack declared. “If you can cover the bag half as well as he can you’ll stand a James H. Dandy chance to cop that position, Joey.”
“Foley’s been doing fully as well as I have at the net,” responded Joe doubtfully. “I don’t believe I can beat him out, Jack. He looks like a pretty good player. He’s built for a first baseman, too, with his height and reach and—and everything.”
“Well, I don’t see that he’s got so terribly much on you in height, old man. And as for reach, why, even if your arms aren’t quite as long as his, you’re a lot spryer on your pins. You’ve got a mighty nice, easy way of pulling them in to you, Joey. I hope you make it, that’s all I hope.”
“So do I, but, as I say, Foley——”
“Oh, Foley’s no wonder, after all. That’s what you want to get into that solid ivory dome of yours. You’ve begun to think that youcan’tbeat him; that’s your trouble. What you want to do is to make up your mind that you’re betterthan he is and that he’s got to prove the contrary. That’s the way I beat out Joe Kenney, last year. Joe had been holding down the job for two years when I got it into my head that I’d like to play out there in the left garden. So I said to myself, said I: ‘Jack, you may not think it now, but you’re a perfectly marvellous left fielder, one of the best, regular first chop, whatever that is! Try and accustom yourself to the fact and hold your head up and stick your chest out. And if anyone asks you don’t hesitate to tell them.’ Well, sir, in a little while I had myself hypnotised into acting like a regular fielder! When I’d meet Kenney I’d look at him pityingly and say to myself, ‘You poor old has-been, you haven’t the ghost of a chance this spring. I’m sorry for you, but it’s my turn.’ I got to believing it, and so did Kenney! About the middle of the season Kenney was sitting on the bench and I was pulling ’em down out there. Of course, a slight ability to hit the ball now and then had something to do with it, but a lot of it was just conning myself into thinking I was the real goods. You try it, Joey. It’s a great little trick.”
“You’re a silly ape,” laughed Joe. “The reason you ousted the other chap was because youbatted around three hundred and he didn’t. If I bat over two hundred I’ll be doing well.”
“Of course, you will! How many on the team last year hit for over that, do you suppose? I don’t believe there were four altogether. Two hundred, say you, slightingly! Two hundred’s good batting for chaps of our age, and don’t forget it. And my average last year wasn’t three hundred; it was two-ninety-three. I want credit for those seven points you stuck on!”
“Foley doesn’t like me,” observed Joe after a moment’s silence. “You can see that.”
“Why should he?” Jack demanded. “Don’t you suppose he knows that you’re after his place and that you stand a pretty good chance of getting it? What do you expect him to do? Hug you?”
“No, but—Oh, well, let’s forget it. I wish, though, we could get out of doors. When do you suppose we will?”
“In exactly four days,” responded Jack without hesitation. “You see if I’m not right. Predicting’s the easiest thing I do.”
The prediction proved correct.