STEADYING DOWN
Tom Locke did not turn his eyes toward the bench; he did not dare, lest
a glance should be interpreted as a supplication, and bring about his
removal from the field. He saw Oulds, ball in hand, standing squarely
on the plate, while “Wop” Grady, the next batter, eager to keep things
going and gain as much advantage for Bancroft as possible before
another pitcher was sent in, was seeking to push him back into his
position.
His manner entirely changed, although his face continued ashen, Locke
beckoned to the catcher, and ran forward. Oulds, scowling, sour,
sullen, met him five feet in front of the pan.
“Give me that ball,” said Locke, taking it from the catcher’s hand.
“Call the curves: a drop or a high inshoot for a strike-out, whichever
you happen to know this man is weakest on. I’m going to get him.”
“Yes, you are!” sneered Oulds. “Why, you can’t――”
“Get ready to catch me,” Locke cut him short. “I tell you I’m going to
get this man.”
Then, seemingly deaf to the continued howling of the crowd, he turned
and walked back, apparently disregarding the taunting base runners, who
were dancing off the sacks to lure a throw.
Larry Stark, doubtless wondering that Hutchinson had not signaled for a
change, stood listless, twelve feet off second; but, without betraying
the fact, Locke observed that Jim Sockamore, the Indian center fielder,
apparently hoping to work an old trick in the midst of the excitement,
was walking swiftly, but unobtrusively, in toward the sack. Indeed,
Sockamore was not twenty feet from the bag when the pitcher faced Grady
at the plate.
Only for an instant were Locke’s eyes turned toward the batsman; like
a flash, he whirled again to face second, and the ball shot from his
fingers as he turned.
He had not received a signal to throw, but he did so on the chance that
the foxy Indian player would sneak all the way to the hassock, if for
no other purpose than to show up what might have been pulled off with a
live pitcher on the slab.
Sockamore was within five feet of the cushion when Locke turned, and,
seeing the ball was coming, he leaped forward. Harney, not a little
surprised, lunged back. Like a bullet the scarcely soiled ball sped
straight into the eager hands of the young redskin, who met Harney and
jabbed it on to him viciously as the Bancroft captain weakly sought to
slip under.
The howling of the angry and dissatisfied crowd was instantly cut
short. The sudden silence was ruptured by a single hoarse word shot
from the lips of the umpire, who had been so surprised that for a
moment he had faltered in giving the decision:
“Out!”
The spectators gasped; Harney choked and rumbled weakly. Sockamore
grinned into the face of the tricked and chagrined man. At the bench,
Henry Cope brought his hand down with a resounding slap upon his thigh,
crying jubilantly:
“There! He got him!”
After a few moments of dazed silence, some scattered persons ventured
to applaud and cheer faintly, while, apparently struck by the seeming
incongruity of the unexpected performance, many others laughed.
“Oh, what an accident!” groaned one of the coachers, as Harney, his
face red with mortification, rose to his feet and gave Locke a stare.
“How’d you ever happen to think of it?” sneered the Bancroft captain.
Chuckling, Sockamore threw the ball to the pitcher, and capered back
into center field. Harney, his mouth twisted and his cheeks burning,
made slowly for the Bancroft bench.
“Accidents will happen,” came from a coacher. “Never mind that. Take a
constitutional, Wop; he’ll accommodate ye.”
Grady idled at the pan, laughing silently over the discomfiture of his
captain. He was still idling when Locke, seeing Oulds ready, shot over
a scorcher that clipped the inside corner.
“Strike!” declared the umpire.
“What’s that? What’s that?” cried the coacher. “It can’t be poss-i-bill?
Another accident!”
Surprise was general, but still, like the coacher, the spectators on
the bleachers and in the stand fancied it related in a way to something
“accidental,” and not one in a hundred thought it probable that the
left-hander could put over another without wasting several.
Oulds, wondering, called for an out-drop, but Locke, knowing the batter
had not yet been egged into a condition that would make him easy to
“pull,” shook his head. The signal was changed to one requesting a
straight drop, and the pitcher swung into a snappy, quick delivery.
The ball seemed to be too high, and not looking for the despised
twirler to “put much on it,” Grady permitted himself to be caught
again. Down past his shoulders shot the sphere, to the instant croaking
of “Strike tuh!” from the umpire.
“Hey, hey! What’s comin’ off here?” bellowed an uncoated, unshaven,
collarless man back of first base. “Lightnin’s hit agin in the same
place.”