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Rh "I guess you will. I'd like to see another good pitcher on the nine. Maybe we'd win more games if we had a good one."

"I don't know whether I'm a good one or not," answered Tom. "I want to try, though. Back home they used to say I had a good delivery."

Sid did not answer at once. He was thinking that to pitch on a country nine was vastly different from doing the same thing on a good-sized college team. But he did not want to discourage his roommate.

"Well," he said after a pause, in which he surveyed the somewhat dismantled room, "I don't know whether it's pitching, or catching, or fielding, or what it is our team needs, but it's something. We're at the bottom of the league and have been for some years."

"What league is that?"

"Oh, I forgot you didn't know. Well, it's the Tonoka Lake League. You see, our college, Boxer Hall and Fairview Institute have a triangular league for the championship. But we haven't won it in so long that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, as the legal documents have it. Last year we had a good chance to be second, but Langridge got a glass arm in the final game and we were dumped. That's why I say we need a new pitcher, and I'm glad you're going to try for it."