Our Baseball Club and how it won the…

Catalpa was wide awake, next day, although the weather was hotter than ever and the little breeze that drew in from the prairie was laden with heat. The unexpected result of yesterday's game had set everybody to speculating on the issue of this day's contest. Some scandal was created by the appearance of Hank Jackson on the street with a roll of bills, offering to make bets on the game. It had never been the custom of anybody in Catalpa to wager anything on a baseball game, and there was some frowning now on the part of conservative and upright people; and those who were not specially conservative, but who disapproved of gaming, did not hesitate to reprove Hank in terms more forcible than elegant. Hank had spent some days in Bloomington, where he had frequented pool rooms and had acquired a taste for betting, and his brief experience was regarded by the younger portion of Catalpa with much awe and interest. He was followed about by the smaller boys of the town who listened while he bantered some of his cronies into making bets.

But public opinion in Catalpa was not yet educated to the point of engaging in gambling on the uncertain result of a baseball game. Added to this, it should be said, was Hank's persistence in offering bets on the defeat of the home nine. That was an unpopular side. Almost everybody wanted the Catalpas to win the game. It would decide the championship; and, although it was almost too much to hope for, there was a feeling of confidence through the town that was quite inexplicable. So, Hank, after making a swaggering tour of the shops and stores, but without receiving much popular countenance, quietly dropped out of the throngs which gathered at the street corners and in other public places. It was in vain that he argued with rude logic that it was just as safe to bet on a baseball game as on a horse race. Very few who listened to him cared to encourage this new sort of gambling.