Jimmie, of course, started after the ball, and made an effort to pull his hand out of his pocket while running. It wouldn’t come out. He jerked and jerked and still it stuck. Meantime the ball had to be caught on the run and Jimmie had to make a try for it some way. He leaped in the air, twisted, stuck up his left hand and caught it with his back to the diamond. Jimmie threw the ball into the diamond with his left hand. Strange to say his right hand then came out of his pocket easily. He wiped the perspiration off his face, grinned, and the crowd went wild for they realized why he had gone after it with one hand. After such talks the “freshies,” who had made some pretty fine catches on the back lots at home, always made a resolution to do something equally startling when they got on the Varsity, and the candidates at Lowell this year were a good deal like all the other freshmen candidates who had gone before them in this respect. This really was a good thing for the boys, although, of course, many of them never realized their ambitions for such fame. CHAPTER V THE FIRST LINE-UP “Well, what do you think of your freshman phenoms?” It was Johnny Everson who was speaking. Johnny besides being the regular second baseman of the Varsity was the chum of Hughie Jenkins, the manager of the team and his chief adviser with Captain Larke. Johnny knew the game from top to bottom and across the middle. They called him “a little bunch of brains and nerves,” and he deserved the compliment. He was small in size, but large in brains and many a game had been won for the college by his quick work at trying moments, to say nothing of the fact that he was largely responsible for the discovery and development of many of the plays which had come to be known as “inside baseball.” He had an aggressive chin which seemed to be always pointing forward, and his eye was as quick and accurate as a sharpshooter’s. “We seem to have a good many gaps to fill and I guess we will find mostly yaps to fill them with,” he went on; “anyway that’s the way I feel to-night after looking over the unpromising material that we put through the stunts at the cage to-day.” “I don’t feel discouraged. You can never tell, of course, on one trial, but watching some of those youngsters this afternoon made me think that with a little training some of them will make good,” said Hughie. “Let’s go over the list and mark the fixtures we can count on, and then we can tell what we have to do to get a real nine together,” said Everson. “All right. At second we have _you_,” said Hughie, “and I guess we won’t need to worry about the Keystone bag, and at third we have Delvin, who I think, will develop this year into a great star at the near station. Captain Larke will handle left field all right as usual, Miner Black will come back stronger than ever this year in the box, and George Gibbs will, I think, do the catching all right. That’s just about half a team, isn’t it?”