Baseball Joe on the Giants; or, Making Good as a Ball Twirler in the Metropolis

“Now then, Joe, send it over!”

“Show us what you can do!”

“Make the ball hum!”

“Split the ozone!”

These and a host of similar cries greeted Joe Matson as he carelessly caught the ball tossed to him by one of his friends and walked over to a corner of the gymnasium that was marked off as a pitcher’s box.

“All right, fellows,” he answered, laughingly. “Anything to oblige my friends.”

“And that means all of us, Joe,” cried one of the boys heartily.

“You bet it does!” chorused the others, with a fervor that spoke volumes for the popularity of the young pitcher.

It was a cold day in late winter and a large number of the village youth had gathered at the Riverside gymnasium. Riverside was Joe’s home town where his people had lived for years, and where he always spent the months between the ending of one baseball season and the beginning of the next.

Joe wound up, while the spectators stretched out in a long line and waited with interest for the first ball.

“Not too hot at the start, Joe,” cautioned Tom Davis, his old-time chum, who stood ready at the receiving end. “Remember I’m out of practice just now and I don’t want you to lift me off my feet.”

“All right, old scout,” returned Joe. “I’m not any too anxious myself to pitch my arm out at the start. I’ll just float up a few teasers to begin with.”

He let the ball go without any conscious effort, and it sailed lazily across the sixty feet that represented the distance between himself and Tom, who stood directly behind the plate that had been improvised for the occasion. It was a drop that broke just before it reached the plate and shot downward into Tom’s extended glove.

“That was a pretty one,” said Tom. “Now give us an upshoot.”

Joe complied, and then in response to requests from the crowd gave them specimens of his “knuckle” ball, his in-and-out curves, his “fadeaway,” and in fact everything he had in stock.

Then with a twinkle in his eyes, seeing that Tom by this time was pretty well warmed up, he cut loose a fast one that traveled so swiftly that the eye could scarcely follow it. It landed in Tom’s glove with a report like the crack of a whip, and a roar of laughter went up from the crowd as Tom danced around rubbing his hands.

“Wow!” he yelled. “That one had whiskers on it for fair. Have a heart, Joe. I’m too young to die.”

“Don’t worry about dying, Tom,” piped up Dick Little. “Only the good die young, and that makes you safe for a while.”

“Is that the kind you feed to old Wagner when he comes up to the plate and shakes his hat at you?” asked Ben Atkins.

“It doesn’t matter much what you serve to that tough old bird,” answered Joe grimly. “He lams them all if they come within reach.”

“How fast do you suppose that last ball of yours was traveling anyway, Joe?” asked Ed Wilson.

“Oh, I don’t know exactly,” answered Joe carelessly. “Something over a hundred feet a second.”

A buzz of astonishment went up from the throng and they crowded closer around Joe.

“A hundred feet a second!” ejaculated Sam Berry, who was connected with the railroad. “Why a railroad train traveling at the rate of a mile a minute only covers eighty-eight feet a second. Do you mean to say that that ball was traveling faster than a mile a minute train?”

“According to that, Joe could throw a ball after the Empire State Express when it was running at that speed and hit the rear platform,” was the incredulous comment of Ben Atkins. “I knew that ball was going mighty fast but I didn’t think it was as swift as that.”

“It’s a pity that there isn’t some certain way of finding out,” commented Tom.

“It has been found out,” said Joe calmly.

“Is that so?”

“How was it done?”

“Why,” replied Joe, in answer to the volley of questions fired at him, “it wasn’t a hard thing at all. You know the big arms factories have a contrivance that tells them just how fast a bullet goes after it leaves the gun. They have two hoops set in a line say two hundred feet apart. These hoops are covered with a mesh of fine wires that are connected by electricity with a signal room. The bullet as it goes through the first hoop cuts a wire which registers the exact fraction of a second at which it is hit. The bullet strikes another wire as it goes through the second hoop and this also registers. Then all they have to do is to subtract the first time from the second and they have the exact time it has taken for the bullet to go that two hundred feet.”

“Seems simple enough when you come to think of it,” remarked Tom.

“Then,” went on Joe, “it struck somebody that it would be perfectly easy to rig up a couple of hoops sixty feet apart and let a pitcher hurl a straight ball through both and then measure the different times at which it struck the two hoops. They did it down at some Connecticut plant and got two of the swiftest pitchers in the big leagues to try out their speed. One of them put it through at the rate of one hundred and twelve feet a second and the other at the rate of one hundred and twenty-two feet a second. That’s why I said that that last ball of mine was going at over a hundred feet a second.”

“Guess you knew what you were talking about, old boy,” said Tom, as he walked back to take his place again at the receiving end. “But after this, cut down the speed to eighty or thereabouts. That’ll be rich enough for my blood at present.”

“All right,” grinned Joe. “We’ll cut out the fast straight ones and work out a few of the curves.”

“Just what do you mean by curves?” asked a rather gruff voice.

Joe turned and recognized Professor Enoch Crabbe of the Riverside Academy, who had been strolling by, and having caught a glimpse of the unusual number present through the open door, had concluded to add himself to the spectators. He was a man generally respected in the town, but very positive and set in his views and not at all diffident about expressing them.

“Good afternoon, Professor,” said Joe. “I didn’t quite understand what you meant by your question. I was just going to curve the ball----”

“That’s just it,” interrupted the professor with a superior smile. “You thought you were going to curve the direction of the ball, but you were going to do nothing of the kind. It can’t be done.”

“But Professor,” expostulated Joe, a little bewildered, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’ve done it a thousand times.”

“I don’t question your good faith at all, Mr. Matson,” said the professor, still with that smug air of certainty. “You undoubtedly think you curved the ball. I positively know that you didn’t.”