smcap">Under Heavy Strain

189 XXIII Blundering Old Reggie 195 XXIV Getting a Confession 204 XXV In the Depths 210 XXVI Off His Stride 216 XXVII Taken by Surprise 221 XXVIII A Fresh Spurt 226 XXIX The Snake’s Head 233 XXX The Final Battle 243

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BASEBALL JOE
CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM

CHAPTER I
QUEER TACTICS

“No use talking, Joe, we seem to be on the toboggan,” remarked Jim Barclay, one of the first string pitchers of the Giant team, to his closest chum, Joe Matson; as they came out of the clubhouse at the Chicago baseball park and strolled over toward their dugout in the shadow of the grandstand.

“You’re right, old boy,” agreed Joe—“Baseball Joe,” as he was known by the fans all over the country. “We seem to be headed straight for the cellar championship, and at the present rate it won’t be long before we land there. I can’t tell what’s got into the boys. Perhaps I’m as much to blame as any of the rest of them. I’ve lost the last two games I pitched.”

“Huh!” snorted Jim. “Look at the way you lost them! You never pitched better in your life. You had everything—speed, curves, control, and that old fadeaway of yours was working like a charm. But the boys played behind you like a lot of sand-lotters. They simply threw the game away—handed it to the Cubs on a silver platter. What they did in the field was a sin and a shame. And when it came to batting, they were even worse. The home run and triple you pasted out yourself were the only clouts worth mentioning.”

“The boys do seem to have lost their batting eyes,” agreed Joe. “And when it comes to fielding, they’re all thumbs. What do you think the trouble is?”

“Search me,” replied Jim. “We’ve got the same team we had when we started the season. Look at the way we started off: Three out of four from the Brooklyns, the same from the Bostons, and a clean sweep from the Phillies. It looked as though we were going to go through the League like a prairie fire. But the instant we struck the West we went down with a sickening thud. Pittsburgh wiped up the earth with us. The Reds walked all over us. The Cubs in the last two games have given us the razz. We’re beginning to look like something the cat dragged in.”

“I can’t make it out,” observed Joe, thoughtfully. “Of course, every team gets in a slump sometimes. But this has lasted longer than usual, and it’s time we snapped out of it. McRae will be a raving lunatic if we don’t.”

“He’s pretty near that now,” replied Jim. “And I don’t wonder. He’d set his heart on winning the flag this season, and it begins to look as though his cake was dough.”

“Even Robbie’s lost his smile,” said Joe. “And things must be pretty bad when he gets into the doleful dumps.”

“I thought that when we got those rascals, Hupft and McCarney, off the team, everything would be plain sailing,” remarked Jim. “They seemed to be the only disorganizing element.”

“Yes,” agreed Joe. “And especially when we got such crackerjacks in their places as Jackwell and Bowen. But speaking of them, have you noticed anything peculiar about them?”

“Great Scott!” exclaimed Jim, in some alarm. “You don’t mean to intimate that they’re crooks, too?”

“Not at all,” replied Joe. “From all I can see, they are as white as any men on the team. And they certainly know baseball from A to Z. They can run rings around Hupft and McCarney. But, just the same, I’ve noticed something odd about them from the start.”

“What, for instance?” asked Jim, with quickened interest.

“They seem nervous and scared at times,” answered Joe. “Jackwell, at third, keeps looking towards that part of the grandstand. The other day I was going to throw to him, to catch Elston napping; but I saw that Jackwell wasn’t looking at me, and so I held the ball. And I’ve noticed that when he’s coming into the bench between innings he lets his eyes range all over the stands.”

“Looking to see if his girl was there, perhaps,” laughed Jim.

“Nothing so pleasant as that,” asserted Joe. “It was as though he were looking for some one he didn’t want to see. And the same thing is true of Bowen. Of course he’s out at center, and I can’t observe him as well as I can Jackwell. But when he’s been sitting in the dugout waiting for his turn at bat, he’s always squinting at the fans in the stands and the bleachers. The other boys aren’t that way.”

“This is all news to me,” remarked Jim. “I’ve noticed that they’ve been rather clannish and stuck close together, but that’s natural enough, seeing that they were pals in the minor-league team from which McRae bought them and that they don’t feel quite at home yet in big-league company.”

“Well, you keep your eye on them and see if you don’t notice what I’ve been telling you about,” counseled Joe. “Of course, it may not mean a thing, but all the same it’s struck me as queer.”

By this time the two pitchers had reached the Giants’ dugout, where most of their teammates had already gathered.

It was a beautiful day in early summer. The Eastern teams’ invasion of the West was in full swing, and baseball enthusiasm was running high all over the circuit. The Giants, after a disastrous series of games in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, had struck Chicago. Or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say that Chicago had struck them, for the Cubs had taken the first two games with ease.

No doubt that accounted for the tremendous throng that