BOSTON WANTS ITS REVENGE.
A good many Yale men returned to New Haven after the boat race at New
London. The college year was over, it was true, but there was still
plenty to do around the old college town, and Yale men are particularly
loyal to the campus. They hate to go away, especially in the pleasant
warm days of June. Packing for the trip home for the long vacation is
made to consume several days, as a rule, and there were odds and ends of
various tasks to be completed.
The last weeks of the spring term had been so eventful, and so
thoroughly filled with exciting athletic events, that Jim Phillips, the
newly elected varsity baseball captain, and a number of his friends,
found that they had no choice about returning.
So they were there, in Jim’s rooms in York Street, when the little
gathering was thrown into a state of pleasurable surprise by the
entrance of Dick Merriwell, the universal coach, under whose tutelage
Yale teams had just completed the greatest year of athletic triumphs in
the history of the college.
“I see you can’t keep away,” he said, laughing. “It is a hard place to
get away from. I’ve found that out a good many times before any of you
ever came here to college at all.”
“I thought you were going up to Maine,” said Bill Brady. “That was what
we heard after the boat race.”
“So I am,” said Dick. “But that’s later. There’s a whole lot to be done
yet before I can get up there. Things that won’t keep. My business up in
Maine will do very well when I get back from Stockholm.”
Jim Phillips sat up in sudden interest, and Bill Brady groaned
comically.
“Were you serious in what you said at New London, Mr. Merriwell?” asked
Jim. “Is there really a chance for some of us to get taken to Sweden on
the Olympic team?”
“There’s a good deal more than a chance,” said Dick. “It’s rapidly
becoming a matter of sheer patriotism for some of us to go. America has
won every Olympic meet that has been held, you know, since the first
revival of the old games at Athens in eighteen-ninety-six. That was the
first time our athletes ever were taken seriously on the other side.
They thought the little team we sent over for that meet was a joke. No
one regarded us as serious competitors for the Englishmen. But we beat
them there; we beat them in Athens again in nineteen-six, as we did in
Paris in nineteen hundred, and you all know how our fellows cleaned up
the meet in London in nineteen-eight.”
“Tempest, of course, we all expected to go,” said Harry Maxwell, who was
strictly out of Olympic discussions. He was a good baseball player, but
not in line for any track or field events.
“I know Tempest is the best sprinter in America,” said Dick, “and I’m
inclined to think that he’s the best short-distance runner, up to the
quarter mile, in the world. But there are several men here who can do
good work. You, Brady, ought to shine in the hammer-throwing event. Jim,
I expect you to try for the broad jump, certainly, and perhaps for some
other events. And I think I’ll go into training myself.”
Dick Merriwell was no longer eligible to compete for Yale, but that he
was out of college did not at all bar him from the Olympic games. Jim
and some of the others had forgotten that fact. They were so used to
regarding Dick as the master coach that they were likely to forget that
this knowledge of all sorts of sports had been gained by active practice
of them. He was a practical expert, as well as a master of theory.
“I say,” said Brady, sitting up, “I guess those Swedes are going to
learn a few things about American athletics, even this year. What?”
“It’s going to be a mighty close meet,” said Dick. “The Anglo-Saxon race
has been at the top of the heap a long time, but some of the other
nations are beginning to wake up. They’ve got a fine jumper in Germany;
the Swedes have great long-distance runners, and you want to remember
that an Italian won the half-mile race at the last meet. Another Italian
won the Marathon, but he was disqualified, too. This isn’t going to be a
dual meet between England and America by a good deal. It will be a whole
lot more.”
The talk continued along these lines for a few minutes. Then Dick
Merriwell spoke up again.
“I didn’t come in to talk about the Olympics, though,” he said. “There’s
time enough for that. But there’s something a lot nearer home. I was
noncommittal about this matter the other day when you asked me about it,
but now I am going to tell you all about it. You fellows may remember
that we had a game here a while ago between the New Haven Country Club
and the Boston Athletic Association, in which Jim Phillips pitched.
Well, the Boston people weren’t very keen about taking their licking
without trying to come back at us, and they’ve challenged for another
game. They’ve got practically the whole Harvard team as members, and
Briggs and Bowen will be their battery. They think it would be
interesting if another game was arranged, with as many Yale players as
possible playing for New Haven. It would really, if their desires were
met, be practically another Harvard-Yale game.
“I promised to see what could be done, and the country club people
appointed me to act as captain of a team, if it could be picked. I may
play myself—I haven’t played a real game of ball for some time. What do
you say?”
The suggestion met with an enthusiastic response.
“You fellows never will let well enough alone,” said Woeful Watson,
bound to be pessimistic. The idea that his classmates and friends were
enthusiastic over any idea was enough to set Watson against it. “You
licked them once. Now they’re asking for another chance, when they’ll
know what they’re up against, and you’re all ready to give it to them.
Foolish, I call it.”
But they were far too accustomed to Watson’s peevish ways to be even
disturbed, much less influenced, by his croaking. Instead, all the
baseball players there began at once discussing the arrangements for the
game.
“I’m delighted to have another chance with Briggs,” said Jim Phillips.
“The first game, up at Cambridge, was all right, but there was a lot of
luck about the way we won that second one, down in New York. I’d like to
run up against Briggs some time when conditions were exactly right.”
“I don’t mind playing baseball,” agreed Brady. “But this talk about
throwing the hammer or putting the shot gets on my nerves. I think I’ll
fake when it comes to the trials, and then they won’t have me, anyhow.”
“Come off, you old faker!” said Jim affectionately. “You know you’ll
work your head off, when it’s a case of doing something for the flag.
That’s even bigger than a chance to work for Yale. Only a few of us in
this country are Yale men, after all, but we’re all Americans; and in
these days, when war’s going out of fashion, games are the only means of
keeping up the old international rivalries.”
“That’s true,” said Dick Merriwell, “and it shows that we’re really
getting civilized. In the old days, when a nation’s blood got hot, the
way it’s bound to, sometimes, the only way of letting off steam was for
a lot of people to go out and kill a lot of other people they didn’t
have any grudge against at all. Now they send their picked men, and race
or jump with the other people, and it’s all settled in a friendly way. I
think the peace funds ought to be used in promoting international
athletics. The one thing that’s done more than anything else to reduce
interest in prize fighting is the spread of all sorts of amateur
athletics.”
“You’re not opposed to boxing, are you, Mr. Merriwell?” asked Harry
Maxwell, who knew that the universal coach was himself an expert boxer,
and had taught Jim Phillips nearly, if not all, that the pitcher knew
about the art of self-defense.
“Not to boxing, no,” said Dick, with a smile. “But I’m opposed to a good
many phases of modern prize fighting. I think every boy who is to grow
up into a manly, healthy man ought to learn to use his fists. But he
ought to learn to fight without losing his temper, and to take a
licking, when he gets it, in the right way.
“Professional boxing is all right, too, when it is carried on in the
right way. But nowadays there is too much thinking about the money and
the moving pictures. The game has been brutalized, too, and it ought not
to be allowed when it is not properly controled by the State or city
government.”
“About this game,” said Jim Phillips. “If you play, Mr. Merriwell, you
will pitch, I suppose?”
“No,” said Dick, “I’d rather leave that to you, Jim. My arm may be all
right still, but I haven’t had much practice of late, and I think I’d
rather see you and Briggs fight it out again. Sherman has sailed for
Europe with his family, so there will be a hole to fill at first base. I
think I can play that position still, and that will do very well for me.
“You and Brady will be the battery; Carter will play third; Jackson
second; Green, of the country club, who was on the team here a few years
ago, short; Maxwell, Brayson, and Tuthill, of the country club, in the
outfield. That will give us a first-class team, I think, and I doubt if
the Boston people can put a better one in the field. I’ll telegraph
Bowen to-night that we can play. We ought to have neutral grounds, I
think, and the New Haven league team will let us use their park.”
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