Читать книгу Dick Merriwell's Heroic Players; Or, How the Yale Nine Won the Championship - Burt L. Standish - Страница 3

Table of Contents

Jim Phillips, industriously making himself a master of certain abstruse problems in mathematics, excited the derision of big Bill Brady, chiefly because it was a warm, lazy spring day, and, therefore, as Bill saw it, entirely out of the question for serious work.

“It’s bad enough to have to go out and do baseball practice,” said Jim’s big catcher. The two were sophomores, and had won fame as the great Yale battery that had humbled every college team with any pretensions to the championship except Harvard. “But I suppose that if we’re going to win that series from the boys in the red socks, we’ve got to do a little practicing.”

Phillips himself paid no attention, but Harry Maxwell, his former roommate, who had dropped in for a call, was willing enough to talk.

“You’re not worrying about those Johnnies?” he said. “Why, Bill, they’ll be easy. We’ve whipped Princeton and Michigan—better teams than any Harvard has played, and better than Harvard, too, if you ask me.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Bill. “I’m no prize pessimist, but I’ve been watching this Harvard team pretty closely, and I’ve noticed that they haven’t had to work very hard to win any of their big games yet. For instance, they beat Cornell two games straight, and did it easy. They gave Pennsylvania the same dose—and we had the time of our lives beating both of those teams. They’ve got a pitcher called Briggs up there at Cambridge, and from the records he’s some pitcher. He played once against Cornell and once against Pennsylvania, and he shut them both out. He’s only pitched about five games this year, because their man from last year, Wooley, is plenty good enough to keep most college teams guessing. But they’ll serve Mr. Briggs up for us, with trimmings, believe me, and if we do any free and fancy hitting while he’s in the box I miss my guess.”

“I haven’t heard much about this Briggs,” said Maxwell curiously.

He knew that Bill Brady’s opinion on any baseball matter was a mighty good one, and that Dick Merriwell, Yale’s universal coach, regarded the big catcher as one of his most useful aides in the development of a championship team.

“That’s because you don’t read the Boston papers,” said Bill. “They’ve been keeping him pretty well under cover—and every one knows why that is, too. They’re saving him up for us. You know how they are up there—beat Yale, no matter what else you do or don’t do. If you can beat Yale, all right. But I was up in Cambridge one day last week, when you fellows didn’t know it, and I managed to see their game with Amherst without being recognized. They sent Briggs in to pitch the nine innings, and what he did to those Amherst fellows was a sin and a shame. They didn’t get a hit or a run. Now, Amherst isn’t much this year. We beat them in a walk, with old Winston pitching, and Sam Taylor doing most of the work for him behind the bat, at that.

“But the thing that got me was that Briggs wasn’t really working his head off at all. He just breezed along, and took things easy, and he’s got a catcher who understands every little trick to make a pitcher do his best—chap called Bowen. I know him well. He was a couple of years ahead of me at Andover, and he taught me a whole lot about the game then. Now he’s a senior at Harvard and captain of the team, and this boy Briggs is his specialty. He’s been spending seven days a week and about four hours a day coaching him, since March. And, take it from me, it’s showing up.

“He’s so much better than any of these pitchers we’ve been running up against that we’ll be lucky to get a hit off him. He can’t pitch more’n two of the games, though. That’s one good thing. They’ll use him at Cambridge in the first game, and shoot Wooley in for the second game here. And, if the series is even, they’ll have Briggs come back at us in New York. They’re willing to drop one game. I’ve told Mr. Merriwell all I know about Briggs, and he’s inclined to think we’re in for the toughest series yet.”

Baseball proved more attractive to Jim Phillips than the higher mathematics. He turned around to Bill Brady.

“What’s this chap got that makes you think so much of him, Bill?” he asked.

“Control,” said Brady. “He hasn’t got your curves—or, if he has, he didn’t show them. But he’s got control, and he can put that ball exactly where Bowen calls for it ten times out of ten. And Bowen knows just where it ought to go, too.”

“H’m-m,” said Jim soberly. “We’re not what you’d call prize hitters this year, Bill. Harry Maxwell here makes a long hit once in a while, and so can Sherman and Jackson. But you’re the only clean slugger on the team. How about it? Can you hit him?”

“Not unless he wants me to,” said Bill cheerfully. “He can keep that ball right under my chin if he wants to. He didn’t show a drop on that ball the other day, but if he’s got one he can fan me about four times. If he can’t, I’ll get a base on balls a couple of times. That’s about the limit of my speed against him. I can’t hit a high ball, and Bowen knows it, too.”

“It might be a good idea for you to learn, then,” said Jim pleasantly. He looked at his watch. “Come along! It’s half past one now. We’ll cut that lecture on political science—we’ve got three cuts left in that—pick up Sam Taylor, and go out to the field. Then I’ll show you a few things about high-ball pitching.”

Brady groaned in mock dismay at the prospect of some extra practice.

“Gee!” he said. “You’re a worse slave driver than Dick Merriwell himself. How about Harry here? He hasn’t learned to hit a fast shoot yet—and he always swipes at them. Doesn’t he need to practice, too?”

“He sure does,” said Jim Phillips. “Come on, Harry. You’re elected, too. We’ve got to try to have a warm reception ready for Mr. Briggs if he’s so especially keen about making trouble for us. Good thing you picked up one of his tricks, Bill. It may mean the difference between winning and losing if we can pick up a run right at the start, before he and Bowen get on to the fact that we’ve corrected some of the weaknesses he’s been counting on.”

Jim Phillips, already assured, by his remarkable pitching, of the captaincy of the next year’s nine, although he would then be only a junior, although few Yale captains are chosen from any but the senior class, had qualities of leadership that made his fitness for that important position very marked.

To induce men like Maxwell and Brady, his intimate friends and classmates, to go out on such a day, when the very air invited them to loaf and rejoice in the lassitude of the weather, was no small feat. It was his magnetism and his persuasiveness that accomplished it; and such qualities do much for a man who must lead other men. In college sports, particularly, a captain should be a leader rather than a driver, inducing men to do what he wants in a tactful way, so that they will be willing and eager, instead of feeling that they are being forced to do their work because of the authority vested in the captain.

Taylor, the senior catcher, once an enemy of Jim Phillips, but now his devoted friend, although Bill Brady had displaced him as the regular varsity catcher, as Jim Phillips had displaced Taylor’s roommate and closest friend, Bob Gray, as the first-string pitcher, proved very willing to go out to the field with them and catch for Jim while the other two practiced with their bats in the effort to become familiar with the curves most likely to be employed by the formidable Harvard pitcher.

At the field they found the diamond already well occupied with freshmen, who, while they awaited the arrival of their coach, were enjoying themselves in a scratch game. The upper classmen immediately impressed half a dozen of the youngsters as fielders, and stationing them in position, began their extra practice.

Dick Merriwell, the universal coach, arrived before they had been long at work, and, soon guessing what they were doing, stood apart and watched them.

“Good work!” he said finally, walking over to them. “Putting in a little practice for the benefit of Mr. Briggs?”

Brady explained what they were doing.

“I’m getting on to the way to slam that high ball out,” he said. “I’ve always stepped back from it before. I got hit on the head by one of those balls when I was a youngster, and I’ve been gun-shy ever since. But Jim’s got the right idea. He marked out a place for me to stand, and he’s been pitching so close to my head that, if I had a beard, he would have rubbed my whiskers off. I see now what my trouble was. I’d always draw away, and by the time I tried to hit the ball, I’d be off my balance, and couldn’t knock it out of the infield.”

Jim sent a high ball whizzing in just after that. Brady shortened his bat and drove the ball on a terrific line right over the third baseman’s head. In a game, such a drive would have been good for two bases at least, possibly three.

“You fellows stole a march on me here,” said Merriwell, with a smile. “That’s the sort of spirit that wins baseball games, too. Be ready, no matter how much trouble it is. It isn’t on the field that baseball championships are won. It’s in the heads of the winners—it’s the men who think about the game and know just what they’re going to do when the emergency comes along.”

Jim Phillips flushed slightly with pleasure. Like all other real Yale men, he had the greatest possible respect and liking for the universal coach. Moreover, Merriwell had aided him since he had been in Yale in several affairs that had looked serious, and he thought much of his praise.