Explore "Our Baseball Club and how it won the Championship" by Noah Brooks on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
To say that the town of Catalpa was very deeply mortified by this latest and most signal defeat of the favorite Nine would be a mild way of putting the case. For weeks afterwards, nothing was talked of in the place but the disgraceful overthrow of the Catalpa Nine. Very soon, so high did the debate run, there were two sides formed among the townspeople, one party blaming the Catalpas for their lack of training and practice, and the other excusing them for their evident inability to cope with the sturdy farmer boys from "down the river."
"I tell you it is not mere brute muscle that our fellows want," said Squire Mead, one of the great lights of the town, "it's not brawn, but skill, that they must acquire before they can stand up against the baseball players of this part of the country. Let them pay more attention to work, and less to frills, and they will come out all right."