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MAKING THE NINE
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BOOKS BY ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY
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Phillips Exeter Series
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth.
FOLLOWING THE BALL.
MAKING THE NINE.
IN THE LINE.
WITH MASK AND MITT.
THE GREAT YEAR.
THE YALE CUP.
A FULL-BACK AFLOAT.
THE PECKS IN CAMP.
THE HALF-MILER.
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Stories of the Triangular League
Illustrated by CHARLES COPELAND. 12mo. Cloth.
THE SCHOOL FOUR.
AT THE HOME PLATE.
THE UNOFFICIAL PREFECT.
THE KING’S POWDER.
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LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON.
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[Illustration: Phil did not walk in from the field.–Page 321.]
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PHILLIPS EXETER SERIES
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MAKING THE NINE
BY
ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY
AUTHOR OF “FOLLOWING THE BALL”
ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES COPELAND
[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
BOSTON:
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
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COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY LEE AND SHEPARD.
Published August, 1904.
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All Rights Reserved.
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MAKING THE NINE.
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
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To
GEORGE ALBERT WENTWORTH
KNOWN TO THE WORLD AS THE AUTHOR OF
A SCORE OF STANDARD TEXT-BOOKS
TO THE ALUMNI OF
THE PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY
AS
The Great Master of Boys
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PREFACE
THE cordial welcome given to FOLLOWING THE BALL by boy readers and
parents—severe critics both, though from very different standpoints—has
led to the writing of this second story, in which baseball has a
sufficiently important part to suggest the title.
The author’s purpose in each case has been to produce a readable story
true to the life of a distinctly American school, true to athletics in
their better spirit and character, and teaching—not preaching—a manly
and reasonable ideal. If he has not succeeded in this, the failure can
certainly not be charged to lack of experience with athletics or school
life or the ways of boys.
Hearty acknowledgments for expert advice on the technicalities of
baseball training and play are due to Dr. Edward H. Nichols of Boston,
who, as player, head coach, and graduate adviser, has probably
contributed more to Harvard victories on the diamond than any other one
man. The play marking the climax of the game described in Chapter XXVI
is a historic one, borrowed from a Yale-Harvard contest. Its hero was
Mr. George W. Foster, of a champion Harvard nine.
ALBERTUS T. DUDLEY.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I AN UNWELCOME PROPOSITION. 1
II ON THE ICE. 13
III THE BATTLE. 25
IV PHIL’S RESOLUTION. 38
V A TOUGH PROBLEM. 45
VI A WESTERN SOLUTION. 57
VII IN THE BASEBALL CAGE. 71
VIII A TRANSACTION IN BOOKS. 82
IX BURGLARY. 90
X MR. MOORE’S THEORY. 98
XI FLANAHAN STRIKES OUT. 110
XII VARRELL EXPLAINS HIMSELF. 122
XIII THE SPRING RUNNING. 131
XIV UNDER TWO FLAGS. 146
XV ABOUT MANY THINGS. 156
XVI PHIL MAKES HIS DÉBUT. 168
XVII A NOCTURNAL MYSTERY. 181
XVIII A SPILLED PITCHER. 191
XIX THE COVETED OPPORTUNITY. 200
XX AN UNEXPECTED BLOW. 218
XXI A GLOOMY PROSPECT. 232
XXII THE DECISION OF THE 243
COURT.
XXIII THE GREAT TRACK MEET. 261
XXIV THE HILLBURY GAME. 282
XXV ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF 300
HALE.
XXVI A DOUBLE ASSIST. 314
XXVII CONCLUSION. 325
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Phil did not walk in from the Frontispiece
field
The Western contingent were 26
established among the pines
on the right
A Corner in Sands’s Room 70
He heard voices,—at first 150
indistinct, then somewhat
clearer
The Academy through the Trees 190
In the Campus Woods 242
He suddenly turned and pulled 292
the ball down
The Main Street of Seaton 324
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MAKING THE NINE
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CHAPTER I
AN UNWELCOME PROPOSITION
“HOW they do yell! Where’s your patriotism, Phil, to be hanging round in
this gloomy crowd when all your friends are howling their heads off
outside? Don’t you know Yale won the game? Why aren’t you out there with
the rest?”
Philip Poole looked up with a smile, but did not reply.
“He’s comforting the afflicted,” said Dick Melvin, who shared with Poole
the ownership of the room. “You don’t want to gloat over us poor
Harvardites, do you, Phil? Thank you much for your sympathy.”
“That isn’t the reason,” said the lad, after a pause, with the sober
look in his big, wide-open eyes that made him seem serious even when his
feelings inclined in the opposite direction. “I just don’t see any cause
for such a racket. A Yale football victory over Harvard is too ordinary
an occurrence to get wild over.”
The chorus of hoots and groans that greeted this explanation brought a
smile of satisfaction to the boy’s face. He was the youngest of the
company, only in his second year at Seaton; the others were mostly
seniors. As Melvin’s room-mate, however, and in a measure still under
the senior’s care, Poole was thrown as much with the older students as
with his own classmates; and the intimacy thus developed had served both
to sharpen his wits and to give him practice in self-defence.
Melvin himself had not been at Seaton much longer than Phil. He had
entered at the beginning of the Middle year, an unknown boy, green,
sanguine, eager to win a scholarship and so relieve his father of some
of the expense of his schooling. Soon, however, fascinated by football
and the glamour of the school athletic world, he had failed to
subordinate his sport to the real objects of school life. How he made
the school eleven and went down with it to defeat; how he lost his
scholarship; how the care of young Phil, suddenly offered him by the
lad’s uncle, sobered and steadied him and enabled him to stay in school;
how he and John Curtis fought the long uphill fight to develop a strong
team, and finally defeated the rival school,—all this has already been
told in another book, and can only be referred to very briefly here. The
great game which marked the climax of the struggle was still a recent
event.
“You didn’t take it so calmly when Seaton won the victory two weeks ago,
and your beloved Dick spent the afternoon kicking the ball over the
Hillbury goal-posts,” said Varrell, a tall, quiet boy, with keen,
restless eyes that followed the conversation from face to face.
“That’s different,” replied Poole. “I’m first for Seaton and afterwards
for Yale. The college can wait until I get there—and that will be a long
time yet,” he added ruefully, “if what I was told in the algebra class
to-day holds true.”
The others laughed patronizingly, as befitted those who had “points” to
their credit on preliminary certificates, and knew Cæsar and algebra
only as outgrown acquaintances—friends they had never been.
“He’s playing off,” said Todd, suspiciously. “I don’t doubt he drew an
‘A’ on his last examination.”
For one member of the group, the conversation was taking an unpleasant
turn. John Curtis talked as unwillingly about examinations or entering
college as the family of a convict on prison discipline. John had been
captain of the football team, a player with a record, already courted by
college committees on the lookout for good material for Varsity elevens.
The glory of victory still rested full and bright upon him, but neither
the adulation of comrades nor his own consciousness of achievement could
make up to him for his failure to be recommended for preliminaries at
the last college examinations, and his present gloomy outlook.
“Let’s see what they’re doing out in the yard,” he said abruptly,
lifting his two hundred pounds from a creaking chair.
Bang, bang, bump, bang! went a heavy object down the stairs. Melvin
jerked the door open in season to hear a scurry of feet at the end of
the corridor, and the slam of two or three doors.
“This thing must stop, do you hear?” he shouted in the direction from
which the sound had come.
The corridor was silent. No one answered; no one appeared. Yet behind
the cracks of doors ajar were uttered low chucklings that the monitor
rather suspected than heard. From a door at the end emerged an innocent
head adorned with a green shade.
“Who are you bawling at, anyway? A fellow can’t study in this place,
however much he tries. First a chump fires a bowling ball downstairs,
and then the monitor curdles your blood with his Apache yells. I’d
rather hear the ball, a good sight. It isn’t so hard on the nerves.”
“You tell those fellows to stop that thing right off, or I’ll report
every one of them.”
“Tell them yourself!” retorted the green shade; “I’m not their
grandmother.”
Inside Number 9 the company roared with laughter. “There’s no more fun
for the poor fellows in this hall since Dick was put over it,” said
Curtis.
“No, he takes his duties seriously,” commented Todd. “What did you do to
them, Mr. Monitor,” he asked, as the official returned, “put ’em on
probation?”
“Warned them,” replied Melvin, with good humor undisturbed.
“Who was that you were laboring with?”
“Tompkins.”
“What!” cried Curtis, “that wild-looking, shaggy-haired man from Butte,
who looks as if he had just escaped from the menagerie?”
“That’s the one,” replied Dick; “though he isn’t as bad as all that.
He’s a bit freakish, I’ll admit.”
“Not so much of a freak as he looks,” said Todd. “You ought to have seen
him open the safe down at Morrison’s. They’d lost the combination, and
the clerks had been guessing, and twisting, and pulling at the knob all
the morning. Then this Tompkins happened in and took a try at it. He had
the door open in two minutes. Just listened at the lock till he heard
the right sound.”
“Couldn’t have been much of a lock,” said Curtis. “Come on; let’s see
what’s doing outside.”
The big fellow went whistling downstairs, followed by Todd and Poole.
Varrell and Dickinson the runner still remained, the latter too much
incapacitated by the sprain he had received in the great game to make
any unnecessary movements, the former apparently uninterested. The
Harvard sympathizers had rallied, and, making up in numbers what they
lacked in righteous cause, were shouting across the yard to the Yale
band, drowning cheers of exultation with more vociferous cheers of
loyalty.
“The fools!” exclaimed the misanthropic Dickinson.
“Who?” cried Varrell, suddenly roused from revery.
“Why, those fellows out there wasting their time and strength on
something that does not concern them at all.”
“Oh!” said Varrell, and sank back again into his chair.
Dickinson and Melvin exchanged a glance of surprise. They knew that at
one time Varrell had had serious trouble with his ears, and was still a
little deaf; but he got on so well, both in the class room and among the
boys, that it seemed hardly possible that he was unable to hear these
boisterous shouts outside.
They sat a few minutes longer in silence, listening to the cheers hurled
back and forth across the yard. Soon throats grew weary, and the mood
changed. The enthusiasts, beginning to be conscious, as they stamped
their feet and dug their hands into their pockets, that the November
night was really cold, bethought themselves of warm rooms and work still
to be done, and scattered to shelter. The scamper of feet was heard on
the stairs; good nights were exchanged in the entries and shouted from
the windows. Then the natural quiet again prevailed.
“Dick,” said Dickinson at last, “you know that Saville has left school.”
“Yes, I have heard so,” replied Melvin. “He was your track manager,
wasn’t he? Who will take his place?”
“You,” answered Dickinson, calmly.
Melvin laughed. “I see myself in that job.”
“I mean what I say,” went on Dickinson. “When I took the captaincy of
the track team, it was only on condition that I should have no trouble
about business matters. So they appointed Saville. Now that he’s gone, I
must have another man just as trustworthy.”
“That’s mere flattery,” replied Dick, still jesting. “I’m too old a fish
to nibble at that kind of a bait.”
Dickinson grew indignant. “I’m not flattering. I know that if you
undertake the thing, it will be well done.”
“But I don’t want it,” pleaded Melvin, serious at last. “There are
twenty fellows who would be delighted to serve, who would do just as
well as I. Besides, I play football, and who ever heard of a football
player acting as manager?”
“I played too, didn’t I, but that doesn’t release me from the captaincy.
I’m sure I’d like to get out of the thing as much as you.”
“A man who can do a quarter in fifty seconds can’t expect to get out of
it.”
“Say forty!” exclaimed Dickinson, angrily. “You may as well.”
Dick laughed. There was nothing so certain to arouse Dickinson’s ire as
the assumption that he was a marvelous runner whose records could be
counted on to move in a sliding scale downward with no particular limit
in sight. This sensitiveness, due partly to the boy’s extreme modesty,
partly to his fear of disappointing such high expectations, his comrades
had played on to their amusement more than once.
“I think I’ll get out altogether,” said the runner, gloomily.
“You can’t,” said Melvin; “the school wouldn’t let you.”
“Then I’ll tell you what I _will_ do,” Dickinson declared, giving the
arm of the chair a blow with his fist. “I’ll insist that you run the
mile again as you did last year.”
“No, sir!” said Melvin, and set his lips.
“You’ll have to if I insist upon it. You don’t play baseball, and you
have nothing at all to do in the spring. I can bring so much pressure to
bear upon you that you simply can’t resist.”
To this Melvin made no immediate reply, but quietly pondered.
“What do you think, Wrenn?” said Dickinson, turning to Varrell, who had
been a silent witness to the conversation. “Isn’t he just the man to
hold the confidence of the school? And he couldn’t be expected to run if
he were manager, could he?”
“Of course not,” replied Varrell, promptly.
“Then will you be my assistant and help me collect the money?” demanded
Melvin, turning to the last speaker.
But Varrell was not easily caught. “You don’t need any assistant,” he
replied, with a grin. “You’re equal to it all yourself. The Athletic
Association wouldn’t elect me, anyway.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” remarked Dickinson.
The trio parted with the question still unsettled. “That was great
generalship,” said Dickinson to himself, exultantly, as he limped
downstairs. “He’s scared as death of the mile run. I guess I’ll land
him.”
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