"Baseball Joe" Matson's great ambition is to go to boarding school and play on the school team, in this second volume of the Baseball Joe series. Joe is a wide-awake country boy who enjoys playing baseball. We follow his career in the series, and his adventures, as he and hometown chum Tom Davis enroll in Excelsior Hall and join the school nine, are recounted here. When not on the diamond, Joe is saving lives and assisting his father against foes who are once again trying to steal Mr. Matson's machinery patents. Lester Chadwick is one of dozens of house pseudonyms created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate in the early to mid 1900's, to "author" children's series. Contract writers (whose identities were to remain unknown under tight secrecy) were hired to write the books in the series under the various names, usually multiple writers contributing volumes to a particular series. Howard R. Garis (1873-1962) is thought to have ghost-written most, if not all, of the 14-volume Baseball Joe series. - Summary by Donald Cummings