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FINKLER’S FIELD
BY RALPH HENRY BARBOUR.
Each Illustrated, 12mo, Cloth, $1.50.
For Yardley.
Finkler’s Field. ($1.25.)
Winning His “Y.”
The New Boy at Hilltop.
Double Play.
Forward Pass!
The Spirit of the School.
Four in Camp.
Four Afoot.
Four Afloat.
The Arrival of Jimpson.
Behind the Line.
Captain of the Crew.
For the Honor of the School.
The Half-Back.
On Your Mark.
Weatherby’s Inning.
D. APPLETON & COMPANY, NEW YORK.
[Illustration: “Sam shed his coat ... and walked toward the plate.”]
FINKLER’S FIELD
A STORY OF SCHOOL AND BASEBALL
_By_
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
AUTHOR OF “FOR YARDLEY,” “WINNING HIS ‘Y,’” “THE
HALF BACK,” “DOUBLE PLAY,” ETC.
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1911
Copyright, 1911, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published October, 1911_
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.――ON THE BENCH 1
II.――“KANSAS” 17
III.――SAM IS MISSING 28
IV.――BOARDERS VS. TOWNERS 48
V.――KIDNAPPED 67
VI.――THREE OUT 92
VII.――CHESTER IS PUZZLED 111
VIII.――THE PEACE EMBASSY 129
IX.――JACK GETS A LIFT 145
X.――THE SLUMP 164
XI.――AN ALARM OF FIRE 176
XII.――THE BATTING LIST 190
XIII.――A GARRISON FINISH 205
XIV.――FINKLER’S FIELD 215
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
“Sam shed his coat ... and walked toward the plate”
_Frontispiece_
“Tilted against the casing in the sunlight and reading
a newspaper, was Perkins” 90
“‘Thank you,’ replied Jack stiffly, ‘but I guess I’ll
stand with my friends, sir.’” 162
“Jack met it squarely with a good sharp _crack_!” 212
FINKLER’S FIELD
CHAPTER I
ON THE BENCH
“One out; men on first and third!”
The coach hit a swift grounder toward second, and second baseman,
reaching it with one hand, snapped it quickly to first, from whence,
it sped back to the plate and the outstretched glove of Dolph Jones,
catcher and captain of the Maple Ridge School Nine.
It was snappy work all around. Tom Shay, the coach, nodded approval,
and the boys grouped on the bench and along the top of the stone wall
behind it voiced applause.
Sam Phillips, who had been pitching to “Ducky Drake,” the substitute
catcher, pulled off his glove and squeezed himself into a seat on the
bench. “Gus is playing good ball this spring, isn’t he?” he observed,
his gaze on the second baseman. “I guess, though, he is still wondering
how that ball got into his mitt!”
“Chesty” Harris, the manager, stopped snapping the elastic on his
score-book and smiled. “Turnbull won’t have everything his own way,
Sammy. Steve Grady is going to push him hard for second.”
“Steve’s not so bad,” answered Sam gravely. “The only trouble with
Steve is that he’s a Towner.”
“Huh!” Harris gave the elastic band an indignant snap. “You wait until
next Saturday and see what the Towners will do to you chaps!” Sam
simulated surprise.
“Say, you’re a Towner, too, aren’t you, Chesty? My word, I’d forgotten
that! You seem such a smart, decent sort of chap that one sort of
forgets your――your degradation!”
A murmur of laughter greeted this sally. Repartee not being the
baseball manager’s strong point, he retorted by digging his elbow
forcibly into Sam’s ribs.
“That’s all right, but you wait and see the way we’ll do you Boarders
up! We’ve got the dandy team this year, all right! Turnbull on second,
Mort Prince to pitch, Coolidge at short――――”
“Where are you going to play?” asked Sam innocently.
“Oh, you run away,” muttered Chesty, amid laughter. Harris’s efforts to
make the team and his final acceptance of the managership, proffered
him as a combined reward for his efforts and consolation prize, was
a school joke. Chesty was good-natured and could stand any amount of
“ragging.”
“We’re going to hammer you all over the lot,” announced one of the boys
on the wall, also a Towner, as the day students at Maple Ridge were
called.
“Pound away, Joe,” replied Sam with a laugh. “I’ll give you a quarter
apiece for all the hits you make off me, my lad.”
“Give me a quarter for every time I get my base?” asked Joe Williams
eagerly.
“I will not! You’d get in front of the ball and get hit! I know you,
Joseph!”
Ensued a spirited discussion of the chances of Boarders and Towners
to win the annual baseball game which was to be played the following
Saturday. As many of the group were Towners, the latter had the better
of the argument, however the contest might turn out.
It was half-past four of an afternoon in the latter part of April. The
fellows had been back from Spring Recess but three days, and today’s
practice represented the first real work that had been done out of
doors since the autumn. The first choice men were on the diamond, and
the dozen or so adorning the bench and the stone wall were substitutes,
if we except Sam Phillips. Sam, a thickset, jolly-looking youth
of sixteen, was very little like the popular conception of a good
ball-player. But in spite of his appearance, Sam was, in his way, a
wonder. He was the best pitcher that Maple Ridge had ever known; what
Coach Shay called “a natural-born twirler.” It had been Sam’s effective
and heady work that had wrested the victory from Maple Ridge’s dearly
hated rival, Chase Academy, last year, and when the Towners talked
glibly of winning Saturday’s game they knew all the while that as long
as Sam Phillips was in the box for the Boarders their chance of a
victory was about as big as an under-sized pea.
Maple Ridge School lies a mile and a half from the town of Charlemont,
Massachusetts. The campus overlooks a wide valley of farm and meadow
pricked out with white homesteads, with the river trailing like a
blue ribbon down the centre. Southward the smoky haze shows where
Springfield lies. Back of the school property rises the steep slope of
Maple Ridge. The buildings are five in number; the two dormitories,
North and South; the recitation hall, or School Building as it is
called; the Residence, abode of the Principal, Doctor Benedict――more
familiarly known as “Benny”――and the gymnasium. Behind the gymnasium
the land slopes to a terrace wide enough to accommodate two tennis
courts. Another slope brings one to the level of the playground. Not
very extensive, this latter; not half large enough for its purpose,
in fact, for behind the campus Finkler’s meadow juts in, cutting the
playground down to a width scarcely more than half of that of the
campus itself. The restrictions of the athletic field had long been
a matter for dissatisfaction amongst the students of Maple Ridge.
There wasn’t room for a running-track, the gridiron filled almost
every foot of field, and as a baseball ground the place was decidedly
unsatisfactory, since a very long hit to right field invariably went
over the stone wall into Finkler’s meadow, necessitating a ground
rule to the effect that over the wall was good for but two bases. The
eastward limit of the school property was marked by the brook that
meandered between the edge of the playground and the first slope of
the Ridge. On the other or northern side the playground was limited
by a high iron fence backed with an evergreen hedge. Beyond lay the
big estate of one of Charlemont’s wealthiest mill owners. As seeking
to recover a ball knocked into Caldwell grounds would have been an
almost hopeless effort, the diamond had been slightly skewed until
the foul-line on that side ran clear to the brook. But by securing a
clear left field it had been necessary to sacrifice right field, and
as a result the foul-line past first ended abruptly against Farmer
Finkler’s stone wall but a short distance behind the bag, and during a
game one or more Preparatory Class youngsters were posted nearby for
the sole purpose of jumping or scrambling over the wall and recovering
balls. The wall was well built, but no wall erected without mortar
can withstand such constant assaults and, as may be supposed, Farmer
Finkler’s wall, in spring and fall, was always in need of repairing.
As a matter of fact, no Maple Ridge boy bothered his head much when in
getting over he toppled a stone to the ground, for between the owner of
the meadow and the students existed a feud of long standing.
“Two down and a man on first!” shouted the coach, tossing the ball and
swinging his bat. There was a _crack_ and away arched the sphere. But
Mr. Shay had put too much swing into that hit, for the ball came to
earth in Finkler’s meadow.
“Let it go!” he shouted, as Dolph Jones tossed another ball to him.
“Same play!”
This time the long fly was caught by Watkins and relayed to the plate
in time to cut off the supposititious runner. Meanwhile “Midget” Green,
a “Prep” of twelve years, whose chief ambition outside of school hours
was to chase balls, was scrambling over the wall. “Chesty” Harris
watched morosely.
“Gee,” he muttered, “I wish we had a field big enough to play ball in!”
There was nothing novel in this complaint, and so the hearers made no
reply, unless a grunt by “Ducky” Drake could be called such. Every one
heartily seconded Chesty’s wish, but they did so silently. Concurrence
was a matter of course, just as protest every time a ball went over the
stone wall was a matter of habit.
“I should think they’d move this fence back and give us more room.”
This expression of opinion, uttered in a quiet, serious voice, came
from a boy sitting on Sam’s left, a good-looking, well-built fellow of
fifteen who had hitherto listened to the conversation in silence. The
looks of surprise directed toward him faded as the others recognized
the speaker.
“Oh,” said Joe Williams, “it’s ‘Kansas.’”
A smile went around, and the boy who had spoken echoed it faintly.
“Well, now, couldn’t they?” he persisted.
“Oh, sure!” replied Chesty with a wealth of sarcasm.
But Sam answered seriously.
“Jack,” he said, “if that stone wall could be moved it wouldn’t be
where it is. Benny has been trying to buy or lease that piece of meadow
from old Finkler for years, but the cranky old hayseed won’t listen to
him. The fact of the matter is, Jack, that old Fink doesn’t like us;
hates us like pizen, to be strictly truthful.”
“Oh, does he? Why?”
“We-ell――” Sam squinted thoughtfully across the diamond――“I dare say
we――that is, former generations of Maple Ridgers――have worried him
some. By turning your head slightly, Mr. Borden, you will observe that
up the slope there, behind South, there are trees. In the Fall those
trees bear apples, very, very enticing apples, eh, fellows?”
“Rather!”
“Yum, yum!”
“The best ever, Sammy.”
“Quite so; and you ought to know, Joseph,” Williams grinned. “Well,
Jack, to err is human, and every fall we err; I might say we fall. I’m
told that we used to err more than we do now. One year, so history
hath it, about sixty fellows descended on that orchard between morning
school and dinner time and just about――er――depopulated it of apples.
Nowadays the old codger keeps a dog, a large, ferocious and extremely
suspicious dog; his name is Rowdy, and he is well named. Rowdy spends
all his waking moments――and I am convinced that he never, never really
sleeps――in prowling around looking for Maple Ridge legs. Gathering
Farmer Finkler’s apples is no longer the pleasant, casual recreation
it used to be. If your soul cries for apples now you put on all your
old clothes, bundle up your legs in leg-guards, arm yourself with a
baseball bat and say your prayers as you creep silently over the
wall.” Sam shook his head regretfully. “No, erring isn’t what it used
to be. You have to _work_ for your apples these days!”
“They’re good, though, when you get them,” sighed Chesty with a
reminiscent smile.
“Yes, but ever since Tyler Wicks spent almost two hours up a tree with
Rowdy underneath begging him to come down and be eaten my appetite for
apples isn’t what it used to was.” Sam frowned. “Personally, I think
it’s a mighty mean trick to let a dog hang around an apple orchard.
It――it indicates a lack of confidence in the――er――the integrity of your
neighbors.”
“Very small, I call it,” Joe Williams agreed laughingly.
“It seems too bad, though, he won’t let the school have the use of that
piece of land,” said Jack Borden, turning to look at the clear, level
stretch of meadow beyond the wall. “It would surely make a dandy field,
wouldn’t it?”
“Fine _and_ dandy, Kansas,” agreed Chesty. “Why, if we had that, or
even a good slice off it, we could have a quarter-mile running track!”
“And then, maybe,” muttered Drake, who was a member of the Track Team,
“we wouldn’t get simply snowed under every spring at the Tri-Meet.”
“Considering we haven’t a track of our own,” said Williams, “I think
it’s sort of wonderful we do as well as we do.”
“Of course it is,” Drake admitted. “But it gets monotonous when you’re
licked hard every year. We go over to Chase or Dixon and get ten or
twelve points in field events and then sort of stand around and watch
the other fellows take all the track stunts. It makes me tired!”
“Maybe,” mused Chesty, “Old Fink will up and shuffle off this mortal
coil some day and then we can have the field.”
“Huh! Don’t you believe it,” exclaimed Williams pessimistically. “He
will leave a will forbidding his――whatdoyoucallems――his heirs to let us
have it. He’s the meanest old rascal in the State of Massachusetts!”
“And he hates us fellows like the mischief,” added Drake.
“Hates us _for_ the mischief, I guess,” laughed Sam. “I don’t think he
needs to be so nasty about it, but I will own that he has some cause
for not loving us.”
“We never did anything to him until he acted so pesky mean,” growled
Williams. “Nothing, that is, but swipe a few of his old apples. And
he’s got about a hundred trees over there and wouldn’t miss what we
take, anyway.”
“Well, I don’t know how it started,” replied Sam, “but I do know that
it’s war to the knife now. Remember last Fall when we met him coming
home from town in his buggy and Tyler Wicks walked up to the old horse
and put his arms around his neck?”
“You bet! Say, that _was_ funny, wasn’t it? The horse stopped short in
the road and Old Fink was so astonished he didn’t know what to do or
say for a minute!”
“And all the time Tyler was telling the horse that he was a ‘nice old
plug’ and why didn’t he get a good, kind master.”
“But when Old Fink woke up he had a few things to say, didn’t he?”
laughed Chesty.
“And the way he lashed out with his old busted whip was a caution! He
got Tyler around the legs all right; he showed me the welts next day.”
“Just the same,” said Joe Williams, “he didn’t have any right to say we
burned his haycock last September.”
“No, and he will think we did it as long as he lives. Nothing Benny
could say made any difference with him.”
“Was it really burned?” asked Jack Borden.
“Oh, I guess it was burned all right,” answered Sam, “but none of us
fellows knew anything about it. It was tramps, probably. We might have
a little fun with the old codger, and swipe a few of his apples, but we
don’t do things like that, you know.”
“It’s too bad he thinks that, though,” mused Jack Borden. “It seems to
me that if we want to get the field we’d ought to be decent to him.”
“Huh! It’s too late for that now,” responded Drake gloomily. “He
thinks we’re a pack of thieves and pirates.”
“Still, if we told him we wouldn’t make any more trouble or take any
more apples――――” suggested Jack.
“He wouldn’t believe it,” Chesty laughed. “You might drop around and
see him some day, Borden, and tell him that. Just mention my name and
it will be all right.”
“And if you get a chance at that fool dog,” said Williams, “just give
him a kick for me, will you?”
“And another for me,” added Drake.
Jack was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully at the meadow over
his shoulder. Finally:
“Just the same,” he said, “I have an idea that Mr. Fink――――”
“Finkler,” corrected Sam.
“Finkler might be brought around if we set out to do it.” Jack smiled
half apologetically. “Of course, I don’t know very much about it,
fellows, but it looks to me like a situation demanding diplomacy.”
“Sort of fancy yourself as a diplomat, Kansas?” asked a boy on the
wall. Jack shook his head.
“No, I don’t. But if you fellows really need that field as badly as you
say you do you’re going the wrong way about it. I know that much.”
“You know a whole lot for a new boy, seems to me,” said Joe Williams
irritably. “I suppose out in Kansas――――”
“Out in Kansas,” interrupted Jack calmly, “we don’t punch a fellow’s
head when we want him to do us a favor.”
No one found anything to say to this, although Williams growled
something to his neighbor regarding “fresh Western kids.” And before
the subject could be proceeded with the Coach called the players in and
turned toward the bench.
“All ready now,” he said. “We’ll try a few innings. Second Team in the
field. Prince and Drake, battery. Wales on third, Borden in left field.
Get out there and throw around, boys!”