MEDFIELD CELEBRATES
Medfield began her celebration of the Fourth about twenty-four hours
ahead of time and gradually worked up to a top-notch of noise,
eloquence, and patriotism at approximately one o’clock Tuesday
afternoon, at which hour the observances in City Park were at their
height. Everyone had turned out, in spite of the almost unbearable
heat, and every club or association, from the Grand Army Post to the
Medfield Women’s Civic Association, had marched in the procession that,
headed by a platoon of police and a very stout Grand Marshal seated
precariously on one of Callahan’s livery horses, had, in the words of
the next day’s _Morning Chronicle_, “taken just forty-eight minutes to
pass a given point.” The _Chronicle_ neglected, however, to mention the
fact that the given point to which it referred was the Grand Street
crossing where the procession had been held up quite ten minutes by an
inconsiderate freight train! Still, it was a fine parade, any way you
looked at it. The Fire Department made a glorious showing, the Sons of
Veterans marched well in spite of the small boys who got under their
feet, the High School Cadets displayed quite a martial appearance, and
the various floats, from that of the Women’s Civic Association, which
depicted a somewhat wabbly, Grecian-robed America accepting a liberty
cap from General Washington, down to the clattering, tinkling wagon
hung with tin pans and dippers and plates and dustpans that represented
the Medfield Stamping Works, all added to the brilliance of the
occasion!
You may be certain that neither Wayne nor June missed that parade. On
the contrary, they viewed it four separate and distinct times, dodging
through side streets as soon as the tail end had passed and reaching a
new point of vantage before the head of it appeared. June was frankly
disappointed in that the Grand Marshal managed somehow to remain in the
saddle until the very end and then left it of his own free will and,
it is suspected, very thankfully. June remained hopeful to the last,
but was doomed to disappointment. He had a wearied, sleepy appearance
today, had June, explained by the fact that he had stayed up all last
night with some of his cronies, doing his best to make the occasion
memorable in the annals of Medfield, assisting at the lighting and
nourishing of the bonfire on Tannery Hill, observing the firing of
the cannon in the park at dawn, and finally returning to “Carhurst” at
breakfast time with the look of one completely surfeited with pleasure.
Wayne had been rather cross at first, but his anger had subsided at
sight of June’s left hand. June, it seemed, had lighted a Roman candle
and, unwisely obeying the instructions of an acquaintance, had held it
by the business end. He hadn’t held it that way long, but long enough
to burn the palm of his hand so badly that he had to wear a bandage for
nearly a week.
The two boys listened to the speeches and singing at the park, ate a
hurried and fragmentary dinner at a downtown lunch-room, and then hied
themselves to the Y. M. C. A. field. The game with Toonalta was to
begin at half-past two, but owing to the fact that Joe Taylor and Jim
Wheelock and one or two others had spent the noontime swaying about on
top of the Association float and that it took them some time to change
from Historical Personages to baseball players, it was nearly three
when, before an audience that crowded the stand and flowed over on both
sides of the field, Pete Chase wound up and sent the first delivery
speeding across the plate for a strike.
It was a sizzling hot afternoon, with scarcely a breath of air blowing
across the diamond. The glare on the gray-brown dirt of the base path
hurt the eyes, and Wayne, clad in almost immaculate, new baseball
togs, felt the perspiration trickling down his back and from under
the edge of his cap. Between him and the pitcher’s box heat waves
danced and shimmered. His throwing hand was moist and he wiped it on
a trouser leg. The Chenango infield was talking hearteningly to Chase
and each other, Jim Wheelock’s drawl mingling with Vic Despaigne’s
sharp staccato. There were two umpires that day and Wayne was wondering
how the one on the bases stood the heat in his blue flannel attire,
with his coat buttoned tightly from chin to waist. Chase wasted one
and then put a second strike across. Medfield’s adherents cheered and
the chatter in the field increased again. Then there was a _crack_ and
Chase put up a lazy gloved hand, turned and tossed the ball to Jim. One
out!
After that, for several innings, Wayne forgot how hot he was. East, the
Toonalta left fielder, also fell victim to Chase’s slants, but Burns,
second baseman, slammed a hard one at Despaigne and that youth made
his first error. Although he recovered his fumble like lightning, the
runner, a fast chap on the dirt, was safe by the time the ball was in
Jim Wheelock’s hands. A single past White sent the runner to second
and placed the rival shortstop on first, but the trouble ended a few
minutes later when Pete Chase scored his third strike-out in one inning.
Joe Taylor had rearranged his line-up for today’s battle. Hal Collins,
left fielder, led off and was followed by Wheelock, first baseman,
Taylor, right fielder, Colton, centre fielder, White, third baseman,
Hoffman, catcher, Sloan, second baseman, Despaigne, shortstop, and
Chase, pitcher.
The Toonalta pitcher, Ellis by name, was heralded as a wonder, and
before the game started the team was undeniably in awe of him. But by
the time the first inning was at an end the awe had disappeared. Nor
did it return, for only one strike-out did Ellis have to his credit
when the contest was over, and that the game went as it did was due
rather to the Toonalta fielding than to the twirler’s science. It was a
hitting game from first to last, a game in which slip-ups in fielding
by either side would have spelled disaster at any moment. As for
strike-outs, after the first inning Chase hung up but two more scalps,
giving him, however, a creditable total of five for the game.
It was Hal Collins who took the first jab at Ellis’ reputation as a
pitcher. Hal failed to hit safely, but his fly to deep centre on the
second ball pitched might easily have gone for three bags, and the
fielder’s catch, made on the run, brought a salvo of applause from
friend and foe alike. Jim Wheelock, with the score two-and-two, sent a
sharp single down the first base line. Joe Taylor tried hard to land
safely but only succeeded in dropping an easy one into shortstop’s
glove and Colton brought the inning to an end by banging a low fly to
right fielder. Jim never got beyond first, but as every man up had
connected in some fashion with Ellis’ delivery the home team’s respect
for his skill fell to zero.
In Toonalta’s second things began to happen at once. The brown-stockinged
first baseman hit between Wayne and Jim Wheelock for a base and only a
fine stop and throw by Joe Taylor kept him from taking second. The next
man hit to Wayne, and Wayne fielded to Despaigne, cutting off the first
runner by a yard. There was, though, no chance for a double. With one
on, Browne, Toonalta’s right fielder, let Chase work two strikes across
before he found anything to his liking. Perhaps Chase held him too
lightly. At all events the fourth offering was a perfectly straight,
fast ball and the batsman leaned against it hard, so hard that the
sphere cleared Chase’s head at a speed roughly estimated at a mile a
minute, climbed up out of Wayne’s reach, and kept right on going. And
when it finally did come to earth no one saw it, for it landed somewhere
beyond the fence at the far end of the field! The handful of Toonalta
“rooters” stood up and shouted themselves hoarse and blared through red,
white, and blue megaphones and waved anything they could lay their hands
on, while a deep and all-pervading silence rested over the Medfield
forces. Two runs came across and things looked rather blue for the home
team, or perhaps I should say brown, since brown was the Toonalta
colour.
The discredited Ellis fouled out to Gas Hoffman and the head of the
visitors’ list was thrown out, Despaigne to Wheelock, and the trouble
was over for the moment. For Chenango, Billy White led off with a
safety to left and went to second a minute later when first baseman let
Ellis’ throw go past him. Hoffman hit to Ellis, the pitcher spearing
the ball with his gloved hand and holding White at second. Wayne
produced the third safety of the game by trickling a slow one down the
first base line, sending White to third and putting himself on first.
Despaigne hit to second baseman and the latter hurled to the plate,
getting Billy White. Wayne took second and Despaigne was safe at first.
Chase worried Ellis for a pass and the bases were full. Medfield howled
gleefully as Hal Collins stepped to the plate, for a hit would tie up
the game. But there were two down and Ellis tightened up, and, with two
balls and one strike on him, Collins bit at a bad one and it came down
into third baseman’s waiting hands just over the foul line.
But that inning encouraged the Chenangos, for, as Joe Taylor said
confidently, if they kept on hitting Ellis as they had been hitting him
something was sure to break lose sooner or later. June, presiding at
the bats and lording it a bit in his fine uniform, predicted ruin and
desolation for the enemy in the fifth inning. “Ain’ nothin’ goin’ to
happen till then,” he declared, looking wise and rolling his eyes, “but
when it do happen it’s goin’ to happen, yes, sir! You min’ my words,
gen’lemen!” June wasn’t far wrong, either, as things turned out, for
nothing did happen until the fifth and even if that inning didn’t prove
quite as disastrous to the enemy as he had predicted, why, perhaps,
that wasn’t his fault.
Four men faced Chase in the third, the first getting a scratch hit,
the second sacrificing him to the next bag and the other two proving
easy outs. In the home team’s half, Jim Wheelock flied out to centre
fielder, Joe Taylor to first baseman--it was a hot liner, but the
chap held onto it--and Colton went out third to first. In the fourth,
Toonalta started out with a walk, followed with a sacrifice hit, a fly
to Collins in left field, another pass and still another one--three
for the inning. Then Jordan was warming up over behind third and the
infield was begging Chase to take his time and stop fooling, and,
with bases filled, half a hundred seemingly insane spectators yelling
like wild Indians, Gas Hoffman looking pretty set about the mouth and
Pete Chase plainly slipping, hit a long fly to Collins and so ended
as nerve-racking a quarter of an hour as the contest provided! When
that ball settled into Hal Collins’ hands the shout that went up must
certainly have been heard at the corner of Main and Whitney Streets,
which is equivalent to saying a mile and a half away! Anyone who has
played through that sort of a half-inning knows the vast and blessed
relief that comes when the end arrives and the men on bases turn,
grumbling, away and the team trots triumphantly in. They pounded each
other’s backs and slapped Chase on the shoulder and shook hands with
him quite as though he had not himself caused all the anxiety and
suspense. June’s face was one big, white-toothed grin!
“That’s their last chance!” proclaimed Captain Taylor. “They’ll never
get another one like it. Now, then, fellows, let’s go in and cop this
game right now!”
But they didn’t. Billy White hit a weak one to Ellis and was out by a
mile. Hoffman popped up a mean little foul to the catcher and Wayne,
hitting safely to short left, obeyed instructions and tried to stretch
the hit to two bases and was caught a foot off by a fine throw from
left fielder.
Again Toonalta secured a hit, her fifth, after one man was gone
in the first half of the next inning. It was Gore, shortstop, who
performed the feat, and it was Gore who gave as pretty an exhibition
of base-stealing as one ever sees. He stole second when the Toonalta
catcher struck out and blocked Hoffman’s throw and then stole third a
moment later. Gas got the ball to White as quick as he could, but Gore
was already sliding his cleats against the bag. Even Medfield cheered
that exploit, realising the next instant that, even with two down,
everything predicted another tally for the enemy. But once more Fortune
favoured the Blues. Or perhaps the credit should go to Pete Chase. At
least, Wayne didn’t deserve much of it, for the ball that came at him
was breast-high and he didn’t have to move from his tracks to take it.
Anyhow, it ended another anxious moment, and the Chenangos again went
to bat.
This was the last of the fifth, Toonalta was still two runs to the
home team’s none and it was surely time to do something in the way
of scoring if anything was to be done. When the other crowd is two
runs to the good, and the game is just half over, you begin to count
innings! Despaigne started out poorly enough, trickling a bunt to third
and being thrown out easily. Chase did no better, being retired by
second baseman to first. The home team’s hopes dwindled again and its
supporters, human-like, began to grumble and make pessimistic remarks.
But Hal Collins was hopefully applauded, nevertheless, when he stepped
to the plate, looking, as it seemed, a little more determined than
usual in spite of the smile that curled his lips. The smile was the
result of June’s earnest plea to “Please, sir, Mister Collins, r’ar up
an’ bust it!”
Pitcher Ellis, with two gone, took Collins untroubledly. He tried to
sneak the first one across for a strike, to be sure, failing narrowly,
but after that he sent in two wide ones, and Hal would have had three
balls to his credit had he not, for some reason, swung at the third
delivery, missed it widely and made the score one-and-two. Ellis tried
a drop then; Collins had fallen for it before; but it went unheeded
and put him in the hole. There was nothing to do then but let Collins
hit--or pass him--and Ellis wasn’t issuing many passes today. The next
delivery was high and over the plate, and Collins fouled it into the
stand. The next was lower and might have gone for a ball had not the
batsman swung at it, met it fairly on the end of his bat, and sent it
travelling down the field just over first baseman’s head and hardly
more than a yard inside the foul line. It was good for two bases and
Medfield cheered wildly.
“Bring him in, Jim!” cried the Blue team as the Chenango first baseman
accepted the bats that June proffered and strode to the plate, and
“Here we go!” shouted a strong-voiced spectator. “Here we go! Hi! Hi!
Hi! Hi! Hi!” A hundred others took up his chant and beat time to it
with feet on planking or with clapping hands. Whether the pandemonium
had its effect on Pitcher Ellis or not, certain it is that his first
delivery was grooved if ever ball was grooved, and equally certain is
it that Jim Wheelock drove it straight past the pitcher and out of the
infield and that Hal Collins tore around from second, touched third
with flying feet and slid into the plate well ahead of the ball!
“There’s one of ’em!” shrieked Hoffman. “Let’s have another, Cap! Hit
it out! Bust it!”
Joe Taylor tried his best to bring Jim in from second, but failed,
finally flying out to centre field and ending the rally.
Still one to two was better than two to nothing, and the home team
trotted hopefully out to their places for the beginning of the sixth.