When the baseball season
opened the girls swarmed on it. Those that didn't understand
baseball pretended they did. When the team was out of town our
form of greeting was changed from, "Good-morning!" or "Howdy-do!"
to "What's the score?" Every night the results of the games
throughout the league were posted up on the blackboard in front of
Schlager's hardware store, and to see the way in which the crowd
stood around it, and streamed across the street toward it, you'd
have thought they were giving away gas stoves and hammock couches.
Going home in the street car after the game the girls used to
gaze adoringly at the dirty faces of their sweat-begrimed heroes,
and then they'd rush home, have supper, change their dresses, do
their hair, and rush downtown past the Parker Hotel to mail their
letters. The baseball boys boarded over at the Griggs House, which
is third-class, but they used their tooth-picks, and held the
postmortem of the day's game out in front of the Parker Hotel,
which is our leading hostelry. The postoffice receipts record for
our town was broken during the months of June, July, and August.
Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne started the trouble by having the team
over to dinner, "Pug" Coulan and all. After all, why not? No
foreign and impecunious princes penetrate as far inland as our
town.
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