Explore "Our Baseball Club and how it won the Championship" by Noah Brooks on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was the custom in Catalpa for the storekeepers to hang out at their doors a little blue flag when they wanted the services of an errand boy. Seeing this signal at the door of Jason Elderkin's dry-goods store, Rough and Ready, wearing in the heats of summer as in winter his coonskin cap, shambled in and asked what was wanted. Jason lifted his spectacles from his nose and said, jocularly: "Why, Rough and Ready, I thought you had gone up to Galena to see the match between the boys and the Galena Club."
"No sir-ee," replied the old man, "I have stayed at home to keep the town in order. Me and Jedge Howell, we have to look after the boys at home, you know, or some of these frisky young colts like Jase Ayres would get away with the town whilst we were gone. " And the old man chuckled as he added, "Cap. Heaton, he and his boy Al have gone together, and they do say that Mrs. Heaton is just wild because she can't keep the old man at home when baseball is going on. Well, it does beat all natur', don't it? Here's Al kept out of the Nine because it isn't high-toned enough for Mrs. Heaton; and here's father and son gone a-galivanting up to Galena to see the show."