“Nothing venture, nothing have, Alice, and it will be no disgrace if our nine are defeated by the Calumets. Unless they are very badly beaten indeed, and that is not improbable, to be sure, they will bring some new honors off the field.”
The Judge’s conservative and moderate view of the case was that of the average of Catalpa. To play the Calumets was in itself an honor.
Henry Jackson represented the most discouraging element in Catalpa public opinion. And when Ben Burton returned to town for a day’s holiday, and became at once unusually familiar with Hank, Larry’s face clouded and Alice Howell confidentially informed her friend Ida Boardman that she never could abide Ben Burton, and that now she knew he was a man who would consort with mean companions. Nothing could be lower, she thought, than the course that Henry Jackson had taken during the late contest between the Catalpas and the Galenas.
It was only by a lucky accident that the Calumets had been able to find a place in their later engagements for a championship series of three games with the Catalpas. The sudden sickness of several members of the Osceola club, engaged to play the Calumets, had made it necessary to cancel all the engagements of the former club for the season. The Osceolas had been overtaken by a contagious disease that had made sad havoc that summer, as many will remember, among strangers who visited the lower portion of the State, which had been under water from late in February until the beginning of May. But the ill-luck of the Osceola club was the means of opening a way for the Catalpas to play the Calumets; and that was felt to be something almost providential—at least, in the town of Catalpa.
XI
In a New Field
“I wish so many of the Catalpa folks had not come in to see the game, today,” said Larry Boyne, discontentedly, on the morning of the first of the championship series of games in Chicago, late in the following October. “It is bad enough to feel like a cat in a strange garret as I do here, without the feeling added of being watched by our friends from home, who will be so awfully cut up if we do not win.”
“But you are not afraid of our losing, are you, Larry? And I am sure there is one young lady, at least, whose smiles will encourage you,” said Hiram Porter, with a grin that was meant to be sly and also cheery. “It is pretty generally understood among the boys (and as long as we are alone together, there is no need of our being shamefaced about it) that you and Miss Alice have come to an understanding, as the saying is. You needn’t say whether that is so or not, Larry, my boy. But, if I were in your place, I would be glad to have those beautiful and sympathetic eyes watching my play. It would make me put in my very best licks, you may be sure of that.”
Larry murmured something about there being a difference in people, and turned the subject to the preparations to be made for the day’s event. The Catalpas had had only a little opportunity to make themselves familiar with the Chicago baseball grounds. At the end of a game played on the previous day, they had a little practice at pitching, and had taken in the situation of the arena sufficiently to enable them to be not entirely strangers to the place.
They found themselves inside of a complete enclosure, skirted by a grandstand at one end and uncovered and open seats at the other. A high board fence bounded the grassy lawn on which the Diamond Field was laid, and the seats for spectators rose above this fence, so that the players were securely left to their own devices while the game should be in progress. A breeze from the lake, tempered by the October sun, swept over the grounds, and was broken, when the wind arose, by the screen formed by the board enclosure.
When the nine, with beating hearts and quickened pulses, entered the grounds on the day so fraught with importance to them, they were a little dumbfounded to see that an immense crowd of people, perhaps ten thousand, all told, occupied the vast array of seats that lined the amphitheater. A brass band blared and brayed in a tall stand set apart for them, and the entrance of the Catalpa nine was the signal for a burst of kindly applause that helped to reassure the lads composing that now well-known club. Since the matches played in the river towns, the nine had met some of the best-known clubs in the State, and in Iowa. With varying success, but generally doing credit to their own native place, the Catalpas had attracted attention by their uniformly excellent play, their manly bearing, and by their steady habits. They had made no enemies. So, when the young fellows, clad in their blue and white uniform, came into the range of vision of the throngs in the grandstand and boxes, a round of applause greeted them, and one enthusiastic citizen from Catalpa, no less a person than the deputy sheriff of Dean County, ventured to propose three cheers for the Catalpa nine. The proposition fell very flat, and, covered with confusion, the deputy sheriff sat down and mopped his manly brow.
As Hiram Porter threw up the penny for the toss, Larry’s eye involuntarily sought a curtained box to which his attention had been directed, the day before, as he had inspected the grounds in company with Miss Ida Boardman, Miss Alice Howell and two other ladies from Catalpa. The party was under the guidance of Mr. Heaton. Albert was never long in one place. He was too highly excited to be depended upon as an escort for the young ladies, and he divided his time between his old companions
