Every afternoon, save when an outside team was to be played, the First
Team and Scrubs came together and some very close, hotly-contested
battles ensued. Oddly enough, Joe’s first opportunity to show what he
could do as a first baseman found him playing with the Scrubs. One
afternoon the Scrubs’ regular first baseman was missing and when its
shortstop got mixed up at second with Sidney Morris and was helped off
the field with a badly-wrenched knee, the Scrubs’ coach, a high school
graduate named Meyers, was in a quandary and was forced to borrow
a player from the First. The choice fell on Joe, and as Joe was a
stranger to the shortstop position Meyer put his third baseman there,
transferred his first baseman to third, and put Joe at first. Joe was
rather too nervous during the first inning to make much of a showing,
but, fortunately, Carl Moran, who was pitching for the Scrubs, held the
First fairly tight and Joe was able to get by without anything worse
than a doubtful error when he failed to get a wide throw in time to
make the out. But in the succeeding innings, five in all, he covered
the bag in a style which opened Mr. Talbot’s eyes and brought good
words from his friends. If he did not have the reach that Frank Foley
had, he was so much quicker than that other youth that he quite made up
for the fact, while at bat he was easily the superior of that player.
Joe did not, however, greatly distinguish himself with the stick that
afternoon, for Tom Pollock pitched the whole six innings for the First,
and Tom, when he tried, could hold any fellow on the team helpless.
Still, Joe did do better than any other member of the Scrubs, getting
two hits, one of the scratch variety, as his earnings. The First Team
nosed out of the game with a two-run lead, but had to work hard that
day for their victory.
The result of Joe’s exhibition with the Scrubs that afternoon was
that two days later he was substituted for Foley in the fifth inning
of a game with the Second Team, much to Foley’s surprise and, I fancy,
disgust. Again he got through creditably, although a poor heave
from Buster Healey got past him on one occasion and led him in the
subsequent confusion to himself make a hurried and ragged throw to
third. But the misplay did not appear in the results and he more than
atoned with two stops that brought applause from the stand and the
benches and by lacing out a two-bagger in the fourth inning that sent
two runs across.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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