A DOUBLE ASSIST
AND now for the finish of the game. When Dick and Varrell made their
hurried exit from the field, the sixth inning was just under way, each
team beginning over again at the head of its batting list. The cheering
that Dick had heard while he was waiting at the steps of Carter was
provoked by the successful retirement of the first three Hillbury
batters. The three men who headed the Seaton list had already gone out
in order. With a balance of one in the score in favor of Hillbury, and
hits few and far between, the visitors’ confidence was growing. Every
additional zero in the Seaton score now meant another nail in the Seaton
coffin.
The seventh began with Poole at the bat. The first ball was a little
wide for him, but he thought he could utilize it, and chopped a little
liner over the short-stop’s head. When Sudbury came up, Ribot had his
pitcher throw two balls in the hope of tempting Phil to try to steal
second. Then came a strike and another ball. With three balls called,
Phil started on the next pitch with the pitcher’s arm on the old chance
of hit and run. Sudbury bunted, and got his base on Ribot’s wild throw
to first, while Phil made second easily. This was a business-like
beginning that stirred anew the sluggish Seaton throats!
Sands came up to the plate. Did ever captain face such an opportunity! A
single would tie the score, a two-base hit would probably win the game.
A grounder in the wrong place might result in a double play and the loss
of the start this made. Sands did his best, but his best was only a slow
grounder toward third, and he sped away to first without much hope of
reaching there. Phil had taken a good lead from second, and dashed past
Kleindienst, the Hillbury third baseman, just before the latter got the
ball and shot it across the diamond to first. Sands was out, but both
Phil and Sudbury had advanced a base.
“Can he do it?” said Tompkins, as Waddington faced the pitcher.
“Do what?” asked Hayes, who was stamping the ground with his foot and
nervously swinging the bat in his hand.
“Anything but strike out or hit to the in-field,” replied Tompkins. “If
he makes a hit, we win the game,—if he doesn’t, we lose. We shan’t get
another chance like this.”
Waddington waited until two strikes and three balls had been called. At
the next one he let drive with all his power.
“It’s a homer, it’s a homer!” shouted Tompkins, jumping up and down in
glee.
“No, a three-bagger,” corrected Hayes, wildly flourishing his bat
dangerously near Tompkins’s head.
But it was neither. Far out in the tennis courts that bounded
centre-field Franklin threw himself at the flying ball, and clung tight
to it, though he fell his length on the ground. He recovered himself and
got the ball back in season to hold Sudbury at third, but Phil had
crossed the plate.
There was babel now on both sides of the diamond, Seaton cheering the
run that tied the score, Hillbury, the brilliant achievement of their
fielder.
Hayes was next in order. “Just a little hit, Haysey,” pleaded Tompkins.
“Over second will do. Make a hit and I will.”
Hayes’s response was to whack the ball over third baseman’s head for two
bases. Sudbury came in with the third run, and Tompkins went out
ingloriously by batting an easy ball to the pitcher. The Seaton half of
the inning was over, with the score now three to two in her favor.
Hillbury got no farther than third in her half. In the eighth the
batsmen on both sides went down like pins before a bowling ball. The
pitchers were on their mettle, every player was alert and keen, chance
itself seemed to bring the hits into the fielders’ hands. Cunningham
sprinted twenty feet to take Robinson’s liner; Watson gathered in a foul
right in the midst of the Hillbury benches; Hayes made a one-handed stop
of what promised to be a three-base hit. The in-field no longer wasted
breath in exhortations; the cheer-leaders no longer tried to lead. The
crowd was left to follow its own excited inclination, and incoherent
yells took the place of cheers and songs.
The ninth began under the same spell of fast play. Poole went out on a
fly to first base, Sudbury struck out, Sands hit to second base, and
Hillbury came in for her last chance. Ribot sent a fly well over in
short left-field, but Watson ran back and caught it. Kleindienst hit
over the second baseman’s head; Haley dropped a fly in short
right-field, and took second while Vincent was trying to catch the
runner at third. With only one man out, and runners at second and third,
the Hillbury cause looked bright. The blue banners waved wildly; but the
Hillbury leaders brought back their companies once more to the old
cheers, and gave Webster a ringing volley as he stepped up to the plate,
bat in hand. Into every heart over the whole field, among players and
audience alike, crept the conviction that the two runs necessary to give
the victory to Hillbury were coming in, and that Webster’s hit was to
bring them.
Phil drew in nearer the diamond. He knew Webster’s batting record like a
book,—the note-book he had kept so long. If Webster made a hit at all,
it would be in short left-field, out of reach of both third and
short-stop.
Crack! went the bat. The Hillburyites rose and sent forth their shout of
victory, as the ball sailed safely over the third baseman’s head. Haley
started immediately from second; Kleindienst, on third, waited a little
longer to make sure that Watson would not repeat his previous play. When
he, too, saw that the ball was out of Watson’s reach, he threw care to
the winds and started home, with Haley rounding the base only a dozen
feet behind him.
Beyond third neither coachers nor runners thought to look. Sands
himself, who had thrown his mask aside and now stood helpless at the
plate, steeling himself to bear the sight of those two winning runs
which were to transform a game almost won into a game certainly
lost,—Sands himself had abandoned hope, and was watching the flight of
the ball with indifference, stunned with the bitterness and humiliation
of defeat.
Then, as he gazed, an abrupt change came over him. His whole figure grew
radiant as with a mighty and unexpected joy. The hit was over the third
baseman’s head, it was true; but the left-fielder, well within his usual
position, had run rapidly forward to meet the ball, taken it on the
bounce, steadied himself for a throw, and, with that splendid shoulder
drive which Sands had so often envied, sent it straight to the waiting
catcher. It came whizzing past the shoulder of the unsuspecting
Kleindienst, and landed safely in Sands’s mitt. Leisurely, as if there
were no chance of error; easily, as if such plays were a matter of
everyday practice; with a smile on his lips at the folly of those who
feared for him and his team,—the Seaton captain stooped and tagged the
first runner as he slid in, then stepped forward to meet the second,
plunging at the heels of the first. The two astonished men were out on
the throw to the plate, and it was still Seaton’s game!
The score:—
SEATON AB R BH TB PO A E
Vincent, r. f. 4 0 1 2 1 0 0
Robinson, 2b. 4 0 0 0 3 3 0
Watson, 3b. 4 0 0 0 2 1 1
Poole, l. f. 4 2 2 2 2 2 0
Sudbury, c. f. 4 1 1 1 2 0 0
Sands, c. 4 0 0 0 7 1 0
Waddington, lb. 3 0 1 2 7 0 0
Hayes, s. s. 3 0 1 2 2 2 1
Tompkins, p. 3 0 0 0 1 1 0
════════════════════════════════════════════════
Totals 33 3 6 9 27 9 2
HILLBURY
Stevens, l. f. 4 0 0 0 2 0 0
Hood, s. s. 4 1 0 0 0 3 0
Franklin, c.f. 4 0 0 0 2 0 0
Ribot, c. 4 1 1 3 6 1 2
Kleindienst, 3b. 4 0 1 1 2 3 0
Haley, r. f. 4 0 1 1 1 0 0
Webster, lb. 4 0 2 2 11 0 0
Cunningham, 2b. 3 0 2 3 3 2 1
Millan, p. 3 0 0 0 0 2 0
════════════════════════════════════════════════
Totals 34 2 7 10 27 11 3
INNINGS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Seaton 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0-3
Hillbury 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0-2
Phil did not walk in from the field after that throw. How he came in he
could not have told, for the wild horde from the Seaton benches met him
near third, and heaved him into the air, and fought for him, and hustled
him to and fro on the diamond like a hockey puck darting over the ice.
When at length he was released, he sought long for Dick and Varrell,
sadly disappointed that his two best friends should so unaccountably
fail him at the moment of his triumph.
Threatened at last by the waiting players with being seized by force and
crammed into the barge, Phil reluctantly abandoned his search and
climbed in over the knees of his impatient friends. They drove down,
hilarious, through hilarious crowds. No one who has never had the
experience can picture to himself the delicious abandon with which a
team, after long months of training and suspense, gives itself up to the
glorious joy of victory. An exultant fire of explanations, reminders,
and compliments ran from one end of the barge to the other.
“Do you know, Phil,” said Sands, giving the boy a hearty slap on the
knee, “I never expect to feel again quite such a shock of happiness as I
had when I saw the ball light in your claws and start home again with
that old ‘gravity rise.’ When I felt it in my hands, I could have
whooped! And to see that poor Kleindienst come sliding in so sweetly,
with the ball there ahead of him, and Haley at his heels, rushing plumb
at it,—and both thinking they had won the game! It was rich!”
“How did you get there, anyway, Phillie?” asked Vincent. “You belonged a
long way out.”
“I knew where he was likely to hit and lay in for him,” said Phil,
modestly.
“The note-book again!” shouted Tompkins, “the miserable, little, dirty
note-book! Why, I pitched the whole game on that book! We ought to have
it bound in red morocco and hung up in the trophy case with the ball.”
They were just passing the walk that led to the Principal’s house, when
the twentieth howl of appreciation rolled up to them from a loyal group.
“Look there!” cried Watson. “Did you ever see that combination before?
There’s aristocrat Varrell and that queer little Eddy ahead, and Dick
Melvin and Bosworth behind. Something must have happened to bring those
fellows together.”
At the sound of the cheering Dick wheeled quickly and waved his hand to
the victors in the barge, then turned again to his charge. Bosworth did
not raise his eyes from the ground.
Tompkins gave Phil a questioning look, and Phil answered with a smile
and a nod. He guessed now why his friends had failed him at the field.
[Illustration: The Main Street of Seaton.]
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