Baseball Joe In The Big League Part 34

Which was the opinion of more than one that day.

Joe was taken in charge by Boswell, and in the clubhouse more attention was given to the sore arm.

"How does it feel now?" asked the trainer, anxiously.

"Fine!" replied Joe, and really the pain seemed all gone.

"Then come out and warm up with me. You'll be needed, if I am any judge."

To Joe's delight he found that he could send the ball in as swiftly as ever, and with good aim.

"You'll do!" chuckled Boswell. "And just in time, too. There goes a home run, and Barter's been hit so hard that we'll have to take him out."

It was the beginning of the third inning, and, sure enough, when it came the turn of the Cardinals to bat, a subst.i.tution was made, and the manager said:

"Get ready, Joe. You'll pitch the rest of the game."

Joe nodded, with a pleased smile, but, as he raised his arm to bend it back and forth, a sharp spasm of pain shot through it.

"Whew!" whistled Joe, under his breath. "I wonder if the effects of that liniment are wearing off? If they are, and that pain comes back, I'm done for, sure. What'll I do?"

There was little time to think; less to do anything. Joe would not bat that inning, that was certain. He took a ball, and, nodding to Rad, who was not playing, went out to the "bull-pen."

"What's up?" asked Rad, cautiously.

"I felt a little twinge. I just want to try the different b.a.l.l.s, and find which I can deliver to best advantage to myself. You catch."

Rad nodded understandingly. To Joe's delight he found that in throwing his swift one, the spitter, and his curves he had no pain. But his celebrated fadeaway made him wince when he twisted his arm into the peculiar position necessary to get the desired effect.

"Wow!" mused Joe. "I can't deliver that, it's a sure thing. Well, I'm not going to back out now. I'll stay in as long as I can. But it's going to hurt!"

He shut his teeth, and, trying to keep away from his face the shadow of pain, threw his fadeaway to Rad again.

The pain shot through his arm like a sharp knife.

"But I'll do it!" thought Joe, grimly.

CHAPTER XXV

IN NEW YORK

"That's good," called Rad, as he caught a swift one. "You'll do, Joe."

But only the young pitcher knew what an effort it was going to cost him to stay in that game. And stay he must.

It was time for the Cardinals to take the field. The Phillies were two runs ahead, and that lead must be cut down, and at least one more tally made if the game were to be won.

"Can we do it?" thought Joe. He felt the pain in his arm, but he ground his teeth and muttered: "I'm going to do it!"

The play started off with the new pitcher in the box. The news went flashing over the telegraph wires from the reporters on the ground to the various bulletin boards through the country, and to the newspaper offices. Baseball Joe was pitching for the Cardinals.

But Joe was not thinking of the fame that was his. All he thought of was the effort he must make to pitch a winning game.

Fortunately for him three of the weakest batters on the Phillies faced him that inning. Joe knew it, and so did the catcher, for he did not signal for the teasing fadeaway, for which Joe was very glad.

Joe tried a couple of practice b.a.l.l.s, but he did not slam them in with his usual force, at which the man in the mask wondered. He had not heard of Joe's lame arm, and he reasoned that his partner was holding back for reasons best known to himself.

"Ball one!" yelled the umpire when Joe had made his first delivery to the batter. Joe winced, partly with pain, and partly because of the wasted effort that meant so much to him.

"The next one won't be a ball!" he muttered fiercely. He sent in a puzzling curve that enticed the batter.

"Strike one!"

"That's better!" yelled Boswell, from the coaching line. "Serve 'em some more like that, Joe."

And Joe did. No one but himself knew the effort it cost him, but he kept on when it was agony to deliver the ball. Perhaps he should not have done it, for he ran the chance of injuring himself for life, and also ran the chance of losing the game for his team.

But Joe was young--he did not think of those things. He just pitched--not for nothing had he been dubbed "Baseball Joe."

"You're out!" snapped the umpire to the first batter, who turned to the bench with a sickly grin.

Joe faced the next one. To his alarm the catcher signalled for a fadeaway. Joe shook his head. He thought he could get away with a straight, swift one.

But when the batter hit it Joe's heart was in his throat until he saw that it was a foul. By a desperate run Russell caught it. Joe pitched the next man out cleanly.

"That's the way to do it!"

"Joe, you're all right!"

"Now we'll begin to do something!"

Thus cried his teammates.

And from then on the Phillies were allowed but one more tally. This could not be helped, for Joe was weakening, and could not control the ball as well as at first. But the run came in as much through errors on the part of his fellow players as from his own weakness.

Meanwhile the Cardinals struck a batting streak, and made good, bunching their hits. The ending of the eighth inning saw the needed winning run go up in the frame of the Cardinals, and then it was Joe's task to hold the Phillies. .h.i.tless in their half of the ninth.

How he did it he did not know afterward. His arm felt as though someone were jabbing it with a knife. He gritted his teeth harder and harder, and stuck it out. But oh! what a relief it was when the umpire, as the third batter finished at the plate, called:

"You're out!"

The Cardinals had won! Joe's work for the day was finished. But at what cost only he knew. Pure grit had pulled him through.

"Say, did you pitch with that arm?" asked Boswell in surprise as he saw Joe under the shower in the clubhouse later.