A CHANGE OF PITCHERS.
The green banners were fluttering like leaves in a furious tempest;
horns, cowbells and human voices sent a wild uproar across the diamond;
Springer, white as a sheet, his confidence totally shattered, was all
to the bad. Another clean hit would almost certainly permit two
Barville runners to score and put the visitors one tally in the lead.
And not a man was out!
Knowing something must be done at once or the game would doubtless be
lost in that inning, Eliot threw the ball to Barker, so that Berlin
might hold the man on third, and, calling Phil, stepped forward and met
him in front of the pan.
"Play ball! play ball!" yelled Sanger. "Don't delay the game!" And,
"Play ball! play ball!" howled the Barville spectators.
Coolly, calmly, soothingly, the Oakdale captain spoke in a low tone to
the unnerved pitcher. "Brace up, Phil, old fellow," he urged. "Take
your time; stop pitching as fast as you can soak the ball over. You're
not using your head. If you'll steady down we can pull out of this
hole. Now, go slow, and don't mind the racket." For a moment his
right hand touched Springer's left shoulder with a steadying pressure.
"I'll try," promised Phil huskily. "I'll do my best, captain."
While the visitors still howled, "Play ball," Roger stood on the plate
and fussed with the strap of his catching mask, which did not need any
attention whatever to begin with, but somehow became strangely tangled
in the wire meshes. From his appearance one might have fancied Eliot
stone deaf to that babel of sounds, and he seemed utterly blind when
Larkins rushed out from the bench before him, flourishing his arms, and
demanding that he should get back into his position and let the game
proceed.
Such a show of outward calm should have done much to restore the
equanimity of the pitcher; but, though Springer tried hard to get a
steadying grip on himself, his fear of what might happen if Pratt hit
him led him to pitch himself into a still worse predicament; and he
handed up three balls, one after another, in an effort to fool the
Barville boy. The shouts of the coachers, urging Pratt to "take a
walk" and asserting that it was "a dead sure thing," added in the
completion of Phil's undoing; for, even though he did his best to put a
straight one over, the ball was outside, and Pratt capered exultantly
to first, while Roberts, grinning all over one side of his face, jogged
home.
"Take him out!" Some one in the Oakdale crowd uttered the cry, and
immediately a dozen others took it up. "Take him out! Take him out!"
they adjured.
These appeals were unnecessary, for already Eliot had decided that Phil
could not continue, and was beckoning for Grant to come in, a signal
which Rodney did not at first seem to comprehend. Presently the Texan
started slowly in from the field, and Springer, at the umpire's call of
"time," turned, his head drooping, toward the bench.
"Hadn't you better take right, Phil?" suggested Eliot.
The heartsick fellow shook his head. "I wouldn't be any good out
there--now," he muttered.
So Tuttle was sent into right, while Grant limbered up his arm a bit by
throwing a few to Sile Crane.
"Here's something still easier, fellows," called Newt Copley. "Perhaps
he can throw a lasso, but he can't pitch baseball. Keep it up. Don't
stop."
"Play!" ordered the umpire.
Rod Grant toed the pitcher's slab for the first time in a real game of
baseball, wondering a bit if he was destined to receive a continuation
of the unkind treatment that had put "the blanket" on his predecessor.
In the meantime, Herbert Rackliff had been collared by Bunk Lander, a
big, husky village boy, whose face was ablaze with wrath and whose
manner betrayed an almost irresistible yearning to punch the city youth.
"You keep your trap closed," rasped Lander, "or I'll knock your block
off! If you utter another peep during this game, I'll button up both
your blinkers so tight it'll take a doctor to pry 'em open. Get that?"
"Take your hands off me!" cried Herbert indignantly. "How dare you!"
"How dast I!" snarled Lander. "I'll show you how I dast if you wag
your jaw any more."
"I've got a right to talk; everybody else does."
"You double-faced, sneaking son of a sea-cook!" blazed Lander. "You
bet against your own school team, did ye? If you belonged in Barville
you might howl your head off; but as long's you camp around these
diggin's you won't do no rooting for them fellers. I'm going to keep
right on your co't-tail the rest of the time, and the first yip you
make I'll hand ye a bunch of fives straight from the shoulder. Now,
don't make no further gab to me unless you're thirsting to wear a mark
of my esteem for the next few days."
Even as Lander uttered these words Grant pitched the first ball, and
Whiting hit it--hit it humming straight into the hands of Chipper
Cooper, who snapped it to third for a double play, before Berry could
get back to the sack.
What a howl of joyous relief went up from the Oakdale crowd! They
cheered Chipper madly, and the little fellow, crimson-faced and happy,
grinned as he gave a tug at his cap visor.
But now came the great Copley, the most formidable Barvilleite, and
there were still two runners waiting impatiently on the sacks, ready to
make the best of any kind of a hit.
"Don't worry about this chap, Grant," called Eliot quietly. "He's just
as easy as anybody. You'll get him."
At this Copley laughed sneeringly, but he missed the first ball Rod
delivered to him, which happened to be one of the new pitcher's
wonderful drops. The uproar coming from the Barville bleachers seemed
to have no effect on Grant, something which Eliot observed with
satisfaction and rising hope. Rod pitched two balls which Copley
disdained, and then he fooled the fellow once more with a drop.
"Two strikes!" shouted the umpire.
"You've got him, Roddy--you've got him cold!" cried Cooper suddenly.
"Don't forget we're all behind you. Take his scalp, you old Injun
hunter of the Staked Plains."
High and close to Copley's chin the ball whistled into Eliot's mitt.
For a moment there seemed some doubt as to its nature, but the umpire
pronounced it a "ball."
"Close, Grant--close," said Eliot. "You should have had him. Never
mind, you'll get him next time."
There was a hush. Involuntarily, the Barville crowd ceased its uproar.
Grant, taking Roger's signal, nodded and twisted the ball into the
locking grip of two fingers and a thumb. His arm swung back and
whipped forward, a white streak shooting with a twisting motion from
those fingers. It seemed like another swift one, shoulder high, and,
with confidence strong in his heart, the red-headed batter sought to
meet it.
For the third time the ball took a most amazing shoot toward the
ground, and again Copley did not even graze it. The umpire shouted,
"You're out!" but the roar from Oakdale's side of the field drowned his
voice.