It was deeply interesting to one who could delve beneath the surface, and see a little of what lay under that smiling, sunny crust. Here was a veteran whose name was famous from sea to sea, and to whom baseball was the very breath of life, struggling with every fiber of his being against the inevitable. Perhaps no one else had a suspicion that he was passing his prime, but some day――and that soon――his throwing arm would lose its vigor, or his legs fail to take him down to first in the marvelous way they had done for years. After that the toboggan slide; back to the minors for a while, and then to the scrap heap. To the seeing mind the field was full of little tragedies like this, which might seem cruel, but which were really inevitable. There is no sentiment in professional baseball. One unvarying law of the Big League is the survival of the fittest. As long as a man can fill a position a little better than any other player the manager can secure――and that individual is always on the lookout for new material――he stays on the crest of the wave. Once let him slip back a very little, however, and he sinks beneath the surface, never, or at least rarely, to struggle into sight again. Happily Janet did not realize all of this, though perhaps she sensed intuitively a little of the hopes and fears, the jealousies and heartburnings, which were inevitable in such a gathering. Presently she saw Lefty waving to her, and answered him with a quick smile and nod. A little later, when the game began, he hastened over to the car, bringing Buck Fargo with him; for he was anxious that his friend should meet the two girls. The big backstop could stay only a moment, but Lefty remained for several innings, enjoying the enthusiasm of the girls over the game. Toward the end of the fourth inning, however, he arose reluctantly from where he had been sitting on the step of the car. “I’ll have to start warming up,” he explained. “They’re going to put me in with the beginning of the seventh.” They both smilingly urged him to win the game for the cubs, said they would wait for him afterward, and watched him cross the field with a lithe, springy step. “He’s fine, isn’t he?” remarked Jean Forsythe enthusiastically. “I like that Mr. Fargo, too. Where’s the other one you were telling me about? I wonder he doesn’t come over.” Janet had been wondering herself. Quite early in the game she had picked out Bert Elgin over by the grandstand pitching to one of the youngsters who was not playing. It seemed rather odd that he could not spare a moment to run over and see them. “Oh, he’s warming up,” she explained carelessly. “He’s going in with the regulars at the seventh inning. It’ll be awfully exciting to see which does the better.”