THE DOUBLE SHOOT.
“You have speed to burn, Merry,” cried Bart Hodge, as he rounded up on
catching a ball that had come flying like a bullet from Frank’s hand.
“There must be powder behind those whistlers.”
Frank laughed. His hat, coat and vest were off, and he was perspiring
freely. Together with Bart, he was putting in a little practice. Frank
was in the pink of condition. His eyes were clear and bright, his
complexion almost girlish in its pink-and-white, while his legs, arms,
muscles, all were firm and hard. The flesh of his arm, from which the
sleeve was rolled back, was white as marble.
“Some of the fellows who have been croaking about your ‘dead wing’
will drop dead when they see you shoot ’em over,” said Hodge, his face
glowing with enthusiasm and earnestness.
“There are always croakers, Bart,” said Frank, indifferently. “A fellow
is a fool if he permits them to bother him.”
“They make me thundering mad.”
“Mustn’t notice them.”
“Can’t help it.”
“Can if you try.”
“No. I am not built like you.”
“It all comes of practice. If you keep trying, in a short time you get
so you do not notice it at all. Get on to this twist, old man.”
Then Frank made a jumping motion with his body, but held his feet on
the ground, and sent in a ball that made Bart blink and gasp.
“Talk about chain-lightning!” cried Hodge. “Why, that one was a regular
dodger! How’d you do it, Frank? or did my eyes fool me?”
Merriwell laughed heartily over Bart’s surprise.
“I call that my double shoot,” he explained. “I’ll give it to you
again.”
Bart tossed back the ball, and Frank carefully wound his fingers round
it; then made the jumping motion, sending it whizzing through the air
again.
This time Hodge dodged and let it go past.
“Scissors!” he cried. “That fooled me. I thought it was going the other
way. It took a queer shoot on the last end.”
Again Frank laughed.
“That was the double curve the other way,” he said.
Hodge trotted back to the netting and got the ball. As he came down
with it, he said:
“I’d like to know when you got onto that quirk. I’ve heard of ‘zigzag
curve pitching,’ but I never took any stock in it. I don’t see how it
is possible to give a ball two motions, so it will curve in and then
turn and curve out without stopping.”
“I discovered the trick by accident,” confessed Frank. “It’s a hard
one, and no man can use it much, for it will knock the stuffing out of
his wrist if he does. You know a drop-ball pitcher soon uses himself
up. Well, this is worse on a fellow than pitching the drop.”
“What does it do?”
“Makes the back of the wrist lame, right here,” and Frank touched the
spot. “There is a snap to it that does the job. The motion of the ball
when it leaves the fingers gives it one curve, and the other curve is
given to it by the snap of the wrist.”
“Say, Merry.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell anybody about this.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Because if you do, they won’t believe it. There’s not one old ball
player in a hundred who will believe any pitcher can make a ball curve
in and out without stopping. There is such a thing as an outdrop, but a
double-shoot--Great Scott! it will be the sensation of the season!”
“I don’t propose to use it much.”
“I should say not!”
“It will be a great thing on some occasions.”
“You bet! Why, it’ll paralyze a batter! He’ll think he’s got ’em.”
Frank pitched two more of those queer curves, and then stopped, saying
he did not dare to follow it up, for fear of hurting his wrist.
“Look here, Merry,” cried Bart; “you’ll have to let me know when you
are going to do that, or I’ll have a passed ball sure. And I want to
know what the final curve will be, too. Can you pitch a rise and a drop
the same as you do this in and out?”
Frank shook his head.
“I have tried all sorts of ways, but I can’t pitch a ball that will
have a double motion up and down. Some fellow may strike it some time,
but I am inclined to think it an impossibility.”
“Did you ever see a pitcher who could pitch a double-shoot before you?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Billy Mains.”
“Who’s Billy Mains?”
“He’s a tall, angular Yankee from somewhere down in Maine--Windham is
the town, I believe.”
“Where did you see him?”
“With the Bostons.”
“I don’t remember him.”
“He was not given a fair trial. He pitched the last three innings of
the opening game at Boston between Boston and Baltimore last season.
The first Baltimore batter to face Mains thought he had the jim-jams,
sure, for Mains started an outshoot, and, while the batter stood with
his stick poised, expecting the ball would pass two feet beyond the
plate, the sphere curved in round his neck and glanced off the end of
his bat. The fellow was so astonished he dropped his bat and fell down
himself trying to get out of the way after the ball had passed. He
may have thought from the curves it had that it might turn round and
come back his way. I was sitting in the grand-stand directly behind
the catcher, so I plainly saw the double curve of the ball. A hundred
others saw it, and half of them uttered cries of astonishment. One old
man said he had been following baseball for seventeen years, but never
had he seen anything like that before. Right then I resolved to find
out how to make that curve, and I have been working at it ever since.
One day, when I wasn’t thinking of it, I happened to throw an out with
a peculiar snap of my wrist. I saw it take the double curve, and I was
lucky enough to remember just how I did it. After that I kept at it
till I was sure of throwing it when I wanted to, but I tried it so much
I came near knocking my wrist out.”
“That’s it!” cried Bart. “That’s how the story started that you had a
‘dead wing.’ The fellows knew you had lamed your arm, but they did not
see how you did it with the amount of throwing you did.”
“The wonder to me now is that I did not lame it more. I was working at
it altogether too much.”
“This Mains, what became of him?”
“Oh, he has been in the New England League and the Eastern League since
his trial with Boston.”
“Do you consider him a good man?”
“He has one bad fault.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s wilder than a hawk at times, and he is liable to weaken or go to
pieces when the batters fall on him. But for that, he is fast enough
for the National League. I consider him a better man than lots of
pitchers in the National League, and he will get there some day, too.”
“I should think his double-shoot would land him in the big league.”
“I don’t believe he can control it, and, after he uses it, he seems to
get wild right away. It knocks him out.”
“Isn’t it going to do that with you, Merry?”
“Can’t tell,” confessed Frank. “If it does, I won’t use it except on
a pinch at the very last end of a game when everything depends on
striking out a good batter. It will be valuable if I don’t use it more
than three or four times for the season.”
Hodge nodded.
“It might save the championship. Nobody can tell. What do you know
about Nat Finch, the new Princeton man?”
“Nothing, save what I have heard in the way of gossip and what I have
read in the papers.”
“Everybody seems to think he’s a terror.”
“He must be a good man, or he would not have such a reputation. But he
will have his bad days, like the rest of us.”
“We can’t expect to win the pennant on his bad days.”
“Not much. Harvard is not making such a blow as Princeton, but she will
put a strong team in the field.”
“What do you know about Harvard?”
“I know she will be in it with both feet. To-day I consider Harvard
fully as dangerous as Princeton.”
“She is not generally considered so.”
“I know it, but Harvard is coming in these days. I’ll tell you
something. If Yale does not win the pennant this year, Harvard will.”
Hodge was surprised, and he showed it; for, like others, he had
regarded Princeton as Yale’s most dangerous rival. Never before had he
heard Frank so freely express an opinion as to the situation.
Bart knew Frank well enough to feel confidence in his judgment on
baseball.
“Where is Harvard’s strong point?” he asked.
“The whole team,” declared Frank. “They are not making a great howl
over one pitcher, for they have two good men left over from last
season, besides any new men that may develop. Reports from Cambridge
say they are putting in plenty of practice. They are getting in team
work, and team work pays. A nine of brilliant individual players will
often be slaughtered by an inferior nine simply because the latter is
well up in team work. Yale should have more practice in team work, I
think.”
“Perhaps you’ll have a chance to take charge of her practice. You know
Phil Hardy is out of it, and----”
“There’s very little chance for me,” said Frank, quietly.
“Why not?”
“Because the only way I would accept the position is on certain
conditions, and the committee will never agree to those conditions.”