"All right," laughed the assistant manager. "I'll have to begin scouting again, I suppose. Too bad, just as Joe is going to make good."
"Oh, don't worry," advised our hero coolly. "I'm going to play."
The trip up was much more enjoyable than Joe had found the one down, when he came alone. He was beginning to know and like nearly all of his team-mates--that is, all save Collin, and it was due only to the latter's surly disposition that Joe could not be friendly with him.
"Think you'll stay in this business long?" asked Charlie of Joe as he sank into the seat beside him.
"Well, I expect to make it my business--if I can make good."
"I think you will."
"But I don't intend to stay in this small league forever," went on Joe.
"I'd like to get in a major one."
"That isn't as easy as it seems," said the other college lad. "You know you're sort of tied hand and foot once you sign with a professional team."
"How's that?"
"Why, there is a sort of national agreement, you know. No team in any league will take a player from another team unless the manager of that team gives the player his release. That is, you can quit playing ball, of course; but, for the life of you, you can't get in any other professional team until you are allowed to by the man with whom you signed first."
"Well, of course, I've read about players being given their release, and being sold or traded from one team to another," spoke Joe, "but I didn't think it was as close as that."
"It is close," said Hall, "a regular 'trust.' Modern professional baseball is really a trust. There's a gentleman's agreement in regard to players that's never broken. I'm sorry, in a way, that I didn't stay an amateur. I, also, want to get into a big league, but the worst of it is that if you show up well in a small league, and prove a drawing card, the manager won't release you. And until he does no other manager would hire you. Though, of course, the double A leagues can draft anyone they like."
Joe whistled softly.
"Then it isn't going to be so easy to get into another league as I thought," he said.
"Not unless something happens," replied his team-mate. "Of course, if another manager wanted you badly enough he would pay the price, and buy you from this club. High prices have been paid, too. There's Marquard--the Giants gave ten thousand dollars to have him play for them."
"Yes, I heard about that," spoke Joe, "but I supposed it was mostly talk."
"There's a good deal more than talk," asserted Charlie. "Though it's a great advertisement for a man. Think of being worth ten thousand dollars more than your salary!"
"And he didn't get the ten," commented Joe.
"No. That's the worst of it. We're the slaves of baseball, in a way."
"Oh, well, I don't mind being that kind of a slave," said Joe, laughingly.
He lay back in his seat as the train whirled on, and before him, as he closed his eyes, he could see a girl's face--the face of Mabel Varley.
"I wonder if her brother told her?" mused the young pitcher. "If he did she may think just as he did--that I had a hand in looting that valise.
Oh, pshaw! I'm not going to think about it. And yet I wish the mystery was cleared up--I sure do!"
The training had done all the players good. They were right "on edge"
and eager to get into the fray. Not a little horse-play was indulged in on the way North. The team had a car to itself, and so felt more freedom than otherwise would have been the case.
Terry Blake, the little "mascot" of the nine, was a great favorite, and he and Joe soon became fast friends.
Terry liked to play tricks on the men who made so much of him, and late that first afternoon he stole up behind Jake Collin, who had fallen asleep, and tickled his face with a bit of paper. At first the pitcher seemed to think it was a troublesome fly, and his half-awake endeavors to get rid of it amused Terry and some others who were watching.
Then, as the tickling was persisted in, Collin awoke with a start.
He had the name of waking up cross and ugly, and this time was no exception. As he started up he caught sight of the little mascot, and understood what had been going on.
"You brat!" he cried, leaping out into the aisle. Terry fled, with frightened face, and Collin ran after him. "I'll punch you for that!"
cried the pitcher.
"Oh, can't you take a joke?" someone asked him, but Collin paid no heed.
He raced after poor little Terry, who had meant no harm, and the mascot might have come to grief had not Joe stepped out into the aisle of the car and confronted Collin.
"Let me past! Let me get at him!" stormed the man.
"No, not now," was Joe's quiet answer.
"Out of my way, you whipper-snapper, or I'll----"
He drew back his arm, his fist clenched, but Joe never quailed. He looked Collin straight in the eyes, and the man's arm went down. Joe was smaller than he, but the young pitcher was no weakling.
"That'll do, Collin," said Jimmie Mack, quietly. "The boy only meant it for a joke."
Collin did not answer. But as he turned aside to go back to his seat he gave Joe a black look. There was an under-current of unpleasant feeling over the incident during the remainder of the trip.
Little Terry stole up to Joe, when the players came back from the dining-car, and, slipped his small hand into that of the pitcher.
"I--I like you," he said, softly.
"Do you?" asked Joe with smile. "I'm glad of that, Terry."
"And I'll always see that you have the bat you want when you want it,"
went on the little mascot. Poor little chap, he was an orphan, and Gus Harrison, the big centre fielder, had practically adopted him. Then he was made the official mascot, and while perhaps the constant association with the ball players was not altogether good for the small lad, still he might have been worse off.
Pittston was reached in due season, no happenings worth chronicling taking place on the way. Joe was eager to see what sort of a ball field the team owned, and he was not disappointed when, early the morning after his arrival, he and the others went out to it for practice.
It was far from being the New York Polo Grounds, nor was the field equal to the one at Yale, but Joe had learned to take matters as they came, and he never forgot that he was only with a minor league.
"Time enough to look for grounds laid out with a rule and compass when I get into a major league," he told himself. "That is, if I can get my release."
Joe found some letters from home awaiting him at the hotel where the team had its official home. But, before he answered them he wrote to Mabel. I wonder if we ought to blame him?
The more Joe saw of his team-mates the more he liked them--save Collin, and that was no fault of the young pitcher. He found Pittston a pleasant place, and the citizens ardent "fans." They thought their team was about as good as any in that section, and, though it had not captured the pennant, there were hopes that it would come to Pittston that season.
"They're good rooters!" exclaimed Jimmie Mack. "I will say that for this Pittston bunch. They may not be such a muchness otherwise, but they're good rooters, and it's a pleasure to play ball here. They warm you up, and make you do your best."
Joe was glad to hear this.
The new grounds were a little strange to him, at first, but he soon became used to them after one or two days' practice. Nearly all the other players, of course, were more at home.