THE FALL OF THE GIANTS.
On a fine Saturday afternoon late in June the wonderful Outcasts met
the redoubtable colored baseball team known as the Cuban Giants. The
game was played in Newark. The baseball cranks of Newark, Elizabeth,
Jersey City, and New York were interested in the game, and a great
crowd turned out to witness it.
The colored boys knew they were up against the “real thing,” and they
played like fiends from the start, hoping to be the first to break the
winning streak of the new stars. The Giants had a great team, every man
of them being a rattling good ballplayer, and they started off like
winners, getting two runs in the first inning, one in the third, and
shutting out their opponents for five straight innings from the start.
Bill Brackett had opened the game as twirler for the Outcasts, but in
the midst of the third inning, after the colored players had made their
third run, with the bases filled and only one man out, Bill was sent to
the stable and Mat O’Neill took his place on the slab.
O’Neill promptly stopped the run-getting of the Giants by striking out
the first batter to face him and causing the next one to put up an easy
infield fly.
“Should have put him in before, McGann,” wheezed Bob Gowan, who was
sitting on the bleachers back of first base, in company with Melvin
McGann and several acquaintances.
“Oh, it’s all right,” assured the manager of the Outcasts. “Hurley
knows his business. I let him run the team on the field. We’ll fall on
that coon pitcher pretty soon and hammer him all over the lot.”
“I don’t know about that. He’s a corker. These colored gents may change
your luck.”
“That’s right,” put in “Reliable Mike” Grafter, who was present. “Your
streak is busted, Gowan. The dinks done it.”
Bob Gowan’s confidence in his team was colossal. There was now no
wavering uncertainty about him.
“Bet you a hundred we win this game, Grafter,” he promptly wheezed,
producing his money.
“Go you,” said the Tammany man, diving into his pocket.
A stakeholder was agreed upon, and the money placed in his hands.
“Just because you happened to beat the New York Nationals you seem to
think you can’t be downed,” grunted Grafter.
“I know something about baseball, Mike,” retorted Gowan, with unusual
animation. “I know we have the team to beat anything in the country.”
“That’s right,” nodded McGann. “Every year the big leagues throw over
enough clever youngsters to make another league. Out of the discards
a champion team can be selected by any man who knows his business.
I give Hugh Hurley the credit of knowing his business. He knows a
baseball player by instinct. He picked up this team. If we were in
either of the big leagues we would be pennant winners. Look how our
boys work together. They are like the individual parts of a perfect
machine. Every man seems to have brains, and brains count in this
game. We didn’t get all the good men discarded. We tried for Josslyn,
the young wizard twirler that Collins of the Bostons was chump enough
to hand over to Providence. If we’d landed him, we’d had two of the
greatest youngsters in the business. You know what Josslyn has been
doing. He shut out Newark six to nothing in the first game he pitched
for Providence, and he’s been making batters blink and fan ever since.
Still Collins is called one of the shrewdest managers in the American
League. They all make mistakes of this sort. He hung onto a certain
old-stager on account of his reputation, when Josslyn could pitch right
round the old boy any day in the week. I’d like to get against the
great bean-eating champs. Oh, say! we wouldn’t do a thing to ’em!”
Grafter grinned.
“You have a bad case of it,” he said. “Better have your head clamped
before it gets any bigger.”
“Results count,” retorted McGann. “This will make our fifteenth
victory, without a defeat.”
“You seem to be one of those chaps who count chickens before they are
hatched. Everything is against you to-day. You’ve made one clean hit
off the coon pitcher.”
“We’ll find him before we’re through. Just keep watch.”
In the sixth inning the Outcasts resorted to a new trick. The first
batter bunted and beat the ball to first.
The next man bunted toward third, laying down a “dead one” just inside
the line. In the confusion that followed the batter reached first in
safety.
Bob Gowan laughed.
“Now you see how they do it!” he exclaimed.
“I don’t see that they’ve done anything yet,” said Grafter.
When the next batter tried to bunt and popped up a little fly that was
taken by the third baseman on the run and shot across to first for a
double play, Grafter held onto his sides and roared.
“No use,” he said. “The coons have you. You can’t get away from them
to-day.”
Gowan looked somewhat disappointed, yet pretended to be not a whit less
confident in regard to the result.
The next batter electrified every one by lacing the ball to deep centre
for three bags and bringing in a run.
“I knew it!” wheezed Gowan. “It was bound to come.”
“That’s one run,” grinned Grafter. “You’ll get no more this inning.”
“We have a man on third.”
“Can’t help it. Two out.”
Grafter was right. The clever colored twirler caused the next batter to
fan.
The Giants whooped joyously as they capered in to the bench.
In the seventh inning, however, the Outcasts fell on the pitcher and
hammered out five handsome singles, which gave them two runs and tied
the score.
In the first of the eighth the Giants made a desperate bid for a
run, succeeding in pushing a man round to third, but he died there,
O’Neill showing what he could do in a pinch and striking out two of the
heaviest and surest batters who faced him.
The last of the eighth delighted the admirers of the Outcasts, for they
got after the colored pitcher in earnest and “sent him on an aërial
voyage.” The result was three more runs.
“I told you, Grafter!” wheezed Gowan. “I knew what would happen! Why,
our boys have been fooling with the nigs! They can’t be beaten by
anything outside the big leagues, and we know they can more than hold
their own with the big fellows. There isn’t an independent team in the
country that can take a game off this bunch.”
A young, healthy-looking, smooth-faced fellow had approached just in
time to hear this remark.
“What do you think about that, boy?” asked Grafter. “Gentlemen, this is
my son, Wallace.”
“I think the gentleman is mistaken,” said Wallace Grafter quietly. “I
am confident that I know an independent baseball team that can wallop
the Outcasts to a whisper.”
“You have another think due you!” exclaimed McGann warmly.
“Two more,” said Gowan.
“Are you in earnest, son?” inquired old Grafter.
“You bet,” nodded Wallace.
“I’ve been betting,” admitted his father, with a grin. “Bet Gowan a
hundred his team would lose. It’s plain I’m a hundred short.”
“You can make it up and some more with it, if Mr. Gowan has the nerve
to back his team against an independent team I’ll name,” said the
politician’s son.
“I’ll back the Outcasts against any independent team in the country for
a hundred—or a thousand,” rasped Gowan.
Grafter and his son exchanged glances; the young man nodded.
“I kinder think I’ll have to take you on that,” said Mike Grafter
deliberately.
The roaring of the spectators drowned his voice. O’Neill had just
struck out the third Giant in the ninth, ending the game, the Outcasts
winning by the score of six to three.
“What’d you say?” asked Gowan, as the shouting subsided and the great
crowd, having risen, was beginning to move to leave the grounds.
“I said I’d take you—for a thousand,” answered Grafter.
“Got it with you?”
“Always have that much loose change.”
“Same stakeholder do?”
“Sure.”
“Put up.”
“All right. Cover.”
Right there, before leaving the bleachers, the bet was made, Gowan
backing the Outcasts against any independent team Wallace Grafter
should name.
Not until the wager had been made did Bob Gowan ask:
“What team is this you’re betting on, Grafter?”
“I don’t know,” answered the politician. “What team is it, son?”
“It’s Frank Merriwell’s team,” said Wallace. “I think there will be no
trouble about arranging the game on any kind of reasonable terms.”