THE STEEL-FINGERED PITCHER
Next moment Goggles found himself experiencing one of the tragic moments
of his young life. In a moment of confidence and enthusiasm he had agreed
to direct his mechanical man, Irons O, while he pitched a nine inning
game of baseball, and now before a crowd of three thousand or more, old
Irons O, who had always been reliable in the past, had turned squarely
about on the first pitch and had all but sent the second baseman to the
hospital with a baseball in his heart. What was the answer?
“Someone’s been fooling with him,” Hop Horner shouted as he came running
up. “Here! Give me the screw driver. That’s it. Now the wrench.”
“Time out!” a big voice roared, “Time out!” It was Big Bill Tyson.
Everyone roared with delight; that is, everyone but those who were
interested in the youthful inventor’s success. Good old Professor George
did not laugh. Instead, he crowded forward to ask, “Anything I can do
here boys? Anything at all?” As if a professor who had taught Latin all
his life could do anything with a mechanical man! All the same it made
Goggles feel good inside. A friend at a time like this—well that was
something.
“Wires all twisted up,” Hop was grumbling. “Somebody messed ’em up.”
For fifteen minutes the two boys worked feverishly. Perspiration streamed
down their faces. Their hands were black and oily, their knees trembling.
“Hundreds of dollars gone,” Goggles was thinking, “hundreds gone if we
fail. Hope for the baseball park gone perhaps.” Still Irons O would not
swing his arms in a proper manner.
The crowd was getting out of hand. Some were swarming on the field. In
one corner, led by a small dark man, a group was chanting in a maddening
manner: “We want baseball! We want baseball! We want Irons O! We want
Irons!”
It was in the midst of this uproar that Goggles felt a hand on his
shoulder and turned to find himself looking into the friendly smiling
face of a man wearing an aviator’s helmet. “He’s one of those men from
the big plane,” he thought to himself.
“Look!” the stranger was saying, “Isn’t that wire, the short one with a
pink thread in its insulation—isn’t it out of place?”
“Sure! Sure it is!” Goggles felt his thoughts clearing. Seizing a pair of
pliers, he quickly made the change. “Now,” he breathed, “Now! Let’s try
it.”
They did try it and old Irons O did his work perfectly.
“O.K. boys?” the stranger asked, still smiling.
“O.K.!” Goggles breathed.
Seizing a megaphone, the man roared, “Ready to go! Clear the field!”
Once again the crowd settled into its place. A look of pleasant
anticipation flashed like a gleam of sunlight from face to face.
“S-strike!” the umpire roared. The game was on. And such a game as it
proved to be! A plucky, good-natured young fellow cheerfully pitted his
strength and skill against a thing made of iron, copper and steel.
The first Centralia batter went down, one, two, three in a row. Goggles,
with Irons O’s aid, had given him two easy curves and a straight swift
one. Perhaps the batter experienced stage fright at batting against such
a pitcher. However that might be, he went down swinging and the crowd
roared its applause.
The second batter came to bat wearing a confident grin. Nor did his
confidence go unrewarded. He made first on a line drive and received his
full share of fans’ approval.
Then Irons O appeared to lose his control. He gave the third batter three
balls in a row.
“He’s afraid of him! He’s walking him. Boo! Boo!” came in good-natured
banter. “Boo! Boo! Boo!” shouted the crowd. Whereupon Irons O, dropping
his steel arm to his side, turned his head half around and, to the
umpire’s surprise, let out wildcat howls that could be heard at the
farthest end of the field.
“Get that umpire!” someone shouted. “Where’s that pop bottle?” But it was
all in fun. The mechanical pitcher tightened up, pitched three sizzlers
in a row. A moment later, a third man went out on a pop-up.
Johnny Thompson saw all of this inning. He saw very little of those that
followed. In all that throng he was interested in just one man—the little
dark fellow who had led the razzing when Irons O appeared to be down and
out for good. Johnny had always been interested in the things people did
and their reasons for doing them. This little dark man was a complete
stranger to him. He wondered, at first in a vague sort of way, why he was
such an ardent heckler. When Irons O had been put into service again, he
thought he detected on the fellow’s face a look of disappointment and
chagrin.
“What can he care?” Johnny asked himself.
All through the game he sat close to that man and watched him. He had
once seen two large dogs fighting a battle for a bone. One had dropped
the bone. It lay beneath their feet as they fought. A third dog, a sort
of insignificant hungry-looking pug, had hovered near all during the
fight, licking his chops but never quite daring to seize the bone.
Somehow, in a strange sort of way, the expression on this little man’s
face resembled that on the insignificant pug’s face.
“I wonder what his interest in this game can be!” the boy whispered. “I
do wonder!”
As for Goggles, during his spare moments while his team-mates were at
bat, he was wondering about an entirely different matter. The men from
the big airplane had caught his attention at once. When one of them,
evidently a skilled mechanic, had interested himself in their problem and
aided them in solving it, he had completely won Goggles’ heart. But
Goggles’ interest went farther than that. “They came here to see this
game. Probably came all the way from the big city, three hundred miles
away,” he told himself. “I wonder why?” For the time he could form no
satisfying answer.
In the meantime the game went on. Bernard caught the ball as it came back
from the catcher. He caught a pop-up fly now and then and also threw
bases. To the excitement of the throng, Irons O did the rest. He pitched
a good game too, but no better than the smiling pitcher from Centralia.
Goggles had always admired that Centralia pitcher, but never as now. Now,
as he directed the pitching of Irons O, as the score went from 3 to 4, to
6-5; then from 7-8 to 8-10, his sympathies were evenly balanced between
the man of iron and the man of brawn. Who was to win? Well enough he knew
that in the end it was up to him to decide.
And so it turned out to be. At the end of the first half of the ninth
inning the score stood 10-9 in the iron man’s favor. At the beginning of
the game they had tossed up to see who came first to bat. Centralia had
lost, so now in the last half of the ninth they were up to bat.
“It’s up to Irons O,” Goggles breathed to Johnny as he went out on the
field.
“Which means it’s up to you!” Johnny smiled. He had read the story of
struggle written on the other boy’s face. He wanted his team and his iron
man to win the game; yet, down deep in his heart he had a feeling that to
set Irons O for a shut-out would be taking an unfair advantage of that
smiling pitcher.
“I—I’ve got to give them a break,” he murmured as he took his place
behind the man of iron. He set Irons O’s fingers for an easy curve, then
pressed the button.
“St-trike! Ball! St-trike! Ball! Ball.” The audience was on its toes.
“Ball three! Strike two!” Irons twisted his head about and screamed at
the umpire. Once again the audience went into near-hysterics.
Goggles set the fingers for a swift fast one. The man went down swinging.
Second batter up. Two curves went wild. A swift fast one would have cut
the plate in halves had not a stout hickory bat sent it shooting away
into centerfield for a two bagger.
“The tying run on second and only one out!” Goggles was thinking hard.
“They can’t have it, not yet!” he decided. He raised the speed of the
iron pitcher’s arm a couple of notches, then set his fingers for a very
wide curve. A ball and three strikes. The third batter went down
swinging.
“Pitcher’s up next. They’ll put in a pinch-hitter,” Goggles thought. But
no, here came that smiling pitcher. He was swinging three bats and
smiling broader than ever.
“It’s a sure thing,” the young inventor groaned. “But how can I?”
Mechanically he set the controls, gave the ball into the iron pitcher’s
fingers, then whispered, “Now!”
And “now” was right. The ball, a slow straight one, was met squarely by
the strongly swung bat. It rose high to go sailing away over the
bleachers and out of the park.
“Home run, and the game’s over!” a thousand voices shouted. A wild roar
of approval greeted the end of the game. Only the little dark man, who
had occupied so much of Johnny’s attention, did not cheer. He sat in
moody silence. “I wonder why?” Johnny murmured. Then he joined the throng
that pressed on toward the spot where the mechanical pitcher stood.
A double rope barrier had been thrown about Goggles, Hop Horner and their
strange invention. As for Irons O, he now bowed to the grown-ups who
cheered him, and then screamed at the boys who shouted at him. Take it
all in all, it had been a day of complete triumph for the Hillcrest boys
and their iron pitcher. And the day was not over—far from it.
The crowd had thinned to a mere handful of over-curious boys, and Goggles
was reaching for a wrench and pliers for unhooking and unscrewing his
good iron friend when, as once before that day, a friendly hand touched
his shoulder and smiling eyes met his.
“I’m back,” the stranger said simply. It was the man of the airplane.
With him were his two companions. “You see,” he began to explain, “we
didn’t just _happen_ to come here. We were sent.”
“I—I guessed that.” Goggles’ heart leaped, though he scarcely knew why.
“You did?” The other seemed surprised. “Well,” he went on, “this is the
story. Mr. Montgomery here, who is vice-president of the Northern
Airways, read of this—this mechanical man of yours. He wanted to see it
perform.”
“I wonder why?” Goggles repeated.
“This is it.” Montgomery, who appeared a quick nervous type of man,
stepped forward. “We are anxious to advertise air travel in every way we
can. We feel it to be safe and we know it’s a fast and clean way to
travel. I said to the boys: ‘If that iron pitcher really works, we’ll
pick him up with his whole ball team and carry him across the country in
one of our big bi-motors, putting on exhibition games.’ This—this man of
yours—what is it you call him?”
“Irons O.”
“Well, he put on a good show—a very fine show. What do you say?”
“I—I—” Goggles’ head was whirling. “I’ll tell you in two hours, if—if I
can.”
“All right. Meet us at the airport.”
“We sure will!”
“Here, Hop!” Goggles threw his tools on the ground as the man walked
away. “You take old Irons O and put him to bed. I’ve got business, plenty
of it.”
“I’ll say you have,” Hop agreed.
“Across the continent!” Goggles thought as he dashed wildly away. “Across
the continent in an airplane. Ball games perhaps in Denver, Cheyenne,
Salt Lake City, Seattle! Boy! Oh boy! And a bag of gold from every port
for our ball field.”
But could they do it? His spirits dropped. “Can we? It—it seems almost
impossible. And yet, somehow, we must. We just must!”
“Goggles,” Johnny said to him later that evening when everything had been
settled that they were to start on that marvelous airplane cruise. “I
don’t like the actions of that little dark man.”
“What little dark man?” Goggles asked in surprise.
“Didn’t you notice him? But of course you wouldn’t have.” Johnny went on
to tell of the little man’s part in that day’s game.
“It is strange that old Irons O should have gotten all mixed up inside.”
Goggles said this as if it were part of the story Johnny had just
finished. “Oh well,” he concluded, “if that little dark man wants to make
us trouble on our trip, he’ll have to hire a plane.”
“He’ll never do that,” Johnny replied. To his own surprise he found
himself wondering, “What _will_ he do?” Had he known the answer, he would
have experienced an even greater feeling of surprise.