Dick Merriwell's Heroic Players
9781465651327
108 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Jim Phillips, industriously making himself a master of certain abstruse problems in mathematics, excited the derision of big Bill Brady, chiefly because it was a warm, lazy spring day, and, therefore, as Bill saw it, entirely out of the question for serious work. “It’s bad enough to have to go out and do baseball practice,” said Jim’s big catcher. The two were sophomores, and had won fame as the great Yale battery that had humbled every college team with any pretensions to the championship except Harvard. “But I suppose that if we’re going to win that series from the boys in the red socks, we’ve got to do a little practicing.” Phillips himself paid no attention, but Harry Maxwell, his former roommate, who had dropped in for a call, was willing enough to talk. “You’re not worrying about those Johnnies?” he said. “Why, Bill, they’ll be easy. We’ve whipped Princeton and Michigan—better teams than any Harvard has played, and better than Harvard, too, if you ask me.” “I don’t know about that,” said Bill. “I’m no prize pessimist, but I’ve been watching this Harvard team pretty closely, and I’ve noticed that they haven’t had to work very hard to win any of their big games yet. For instance, they beat Cornell two games straight, and did it easy. They gave Pennsylvania the same dose—and we had the time of our lives beating both of those teams. They’ve got a pitcher called Briggs up there at Cambridge, and from the records he’s some pitcher. He played once against Cornell and once against Pennsylvania, and he shut them both out. He’s only pitched about five games this year, because their man from last year, Wooley, is plenty good enough to keep most college teams guessing. But they’ll serve Mr. Briggs up for us, with trimmings, believe me, and if we do any free and fancy hitting while he’s in the box I miss my guess.” “I haven’t heard much about this Briggs,” said Maxwell curiously. He knew that Bill Brady’s opinion on any baseball matter was a mighty good one, and that Dick Merriwell, Yale’s universal coach, regarded the big catcher as one of his most useful aides in the development of a championship team. “That’s because you don’t read the Boston papers,” said Bill. “They’ve been keeping him pretty well under cover—and every one knows why that is, too. They’re saving him up for us. You know how they are up there—beat Yale, no matter what else you do or don’t do. If you can beat Yale, all right. But I was up in Cambridge one day last week, when you fellows didn’t know it, and I managed to see their game with Amherst without being recognized. They sent Briggs in to pitch the nine innings, and what he did to those Amherst fellows was a sin and a shame. They didn’t get a hit or a run. Now, Amherst isn’t much this year. We beat them in a walk, with old Winston pitching, and Sam Taylor doing most of the work for him behind the bat, at that.
