During the trip, Winters and Benson occupied the pitcher's box more often than Bert, and it was evident that, despite Bert's showing in the early spring practice, both Ainslee and Reddy were more inclined to pin their faith this season on their tested stars than on the new recruit. They really believed that Bert had "more on the ball" than either of the others, but were inclined to let him have a year on the bench before putting him in for the "big" games. They knew the tremendous importance of experience and they also knew how nerve-racking was the strain of playing before a crowd of perhaps twenty-five thousand frenzied rooters. Bert _might_ do this, but Winters and Benson had actually _done_ it, and they could not leave this significant fact out of their calculations. So they carried him along gradually, never letting up on their instruction and advice and occasionally putting him in to pitch one or two innings to relieve the older men after the game was pretty surely won. Bert was too sensible and sportsmanlike to resent this, and followed with care and enthusiasm the training of his mentors. A better pair of teachers could not have been found and Bert made rapid progress. Something new was constantly coming up, and, as he confided to Dick, he never dreamed there was such a variety of curves. There was "the hook," "the knuckle," "the palm," "the high floater," "the thumb jump," "the cross fire," and so many others that there seemed to be no end to them. But though he sought to add them all to his repertory, he followed Ainslee's earnest urging to perfect his wonderful fadeaway, and gave more attention to that than to any other. "And to think," he said to Tom, one day, "it isn't so very long ago that people didn't believe it was possible to throw a curve ball at all and learned men wrote articles to show that it couldn't be done." "Yes," said Tom, "they remind me of the eminent scientist who wrote a book proving, to his own satisfaction, at least, that a vessel couldn't cross the Atlantic under steam. But the first copy of the book that reached America was brought over by a steamer." "Yes," chimed in Dick, "they were like the farmer who had read the description of a giraffe and thought it a fairy story. One day a circus came to town with a giraffe as one of its attractions. The farmer walked all around it, and then, turning to his friends, said stubbornly, 'There ain't no such animal.'"