CHAPTER XVIIIN THE TWELFTH INNING
Joe started the game at first that afternoon and had a busy five innings, for Morristown was a hard-hitting aggregation and slammed Carl Moran all over the lot during two innings and then tried its best to do the same with Toby Williams. Sharp fielding alone allowed Carl to last as long as he did, and it was not until the fourth inning that the visitors got their first run across. In the meanwhile Amesville had scored twice, once in the first and once in the third. Sam Craig’s three-bagger, with George Peddie on first, did the trick in the first inning, and two hits and a stolen base accounted for the second run.
It was a snappy game from start to finish, and a good-sized audience was on hand to enjoy it. Morristown played in hard luck during the first part of the contest, for, although she hit hard and often, her hits didn’t earn runs. In fact, it was a dropped ball at the plate that gave her her single tally in the fourth. Smith’s throw mayhave been a bit low, but Sam Craig ought to have held it and had the runner out by a yard. He didn’t, however, and so when the home team came to bat in the last of that inning the score was 2 to 1.
The batting order had been changed subsequent to Buster Healey’s departure and Hale was hitting in fourth place, followed by Peddie, Craig, and Faulkner, or Foley. Cummings and the pitcher ended the list. The new arrangement had not, however, been producing very satisfactory results. In the fourth Steve Hale started off well by banging out a liner that was too hot for shortstop to hold and reaching his base before that player could recover the ball and peg it across. Joe had two strikes against him before he found one that he liked, and then hit a slow one to first and sacrificed Hale to second. Sam Craig fouled off three and finally flied out to left fielder. Cummings made the second out, third to first, and Toby Williams came up with the task of scoring Hale from second. Toby wasn’t very much of a batsman, although when he hit the ball usually travelled far. The Morristown pitcher had been putting the first delivery over time after time and Toby was instructed to go after it. He did and he got it, and it whizzed straight down the thirdbase line, just out of reach of the baseman, and rolled gaily into deep left while Hale sprinted home and Toby reached second. Smith brought the inning to an end when, following Toby’s example, he hit the first ball pitched and slapped it squarely into the pitcher’s glove.
Neither side scored in the fifth, although the visiting team got men on third and second on errors by Hale and Smith, and Jack Strobe got to first on a Texas Leaguer. In neither case could the following batsmen bring home the bacon. Joe yielded first base to Frank Foley when the sixth inning began and saw the rest of the game from the bench, save when, in the eighth, he caught Tom Pollock, who warmed up in case the visitors should develop a rally. But the game went through to the end with the score 3 to 1. Morristown did her best to even things up in the eighth and ninth, but some one of the enemy always managed to get in front of the ball, and so, although the visitors knocked the ball to every part of the field, they had to submit to defeat.
Amesville’s winning streak held for a fortnight and three other games were played and won. Then came the return contest with Lynton. The team travelled to the neighbouring town on a cloudy Saturday forenoon, much in doubt as towhether their journey would prove worth while. But when, after they had partaken of a hilarious dinner at the Lynton hotel, they started for the ball grounds, the sun broke through and for the rest of the afternoon tried its best to broil them. To Joe that was a memorable game, for it marked his elevation to the position of regular first baseman. That day, since hitters were needed badly, Frank Foley remained on the bench throughout the game, and Jack was jubilant. He had a fine time twitting Foley whenever he came to the bench, and when the seventh and eighth innings had passed and the deposed first baseman still squirmed uneasily there in idleness his temper, which had proved equal to Jack’s gibes during the early innings, quite deserted him and he earnestly begged Jack to come behind the stand for a few minutes and see what would happen! But Jack declined the invitation, politely yet firmly, and Foley, angry clear through, was denied even that slight consolation.
That was a pitchers’ battle. Tom Pollock twirled for Amesville, for Coach Talbot wanted the game, as, you may be certain, did the forty or fifty patriotic rooters who accompanied the team. Opposed to Tom was one Corrigan, a shock-headed youth who, it was more than suspected,would have had difficulty in proving himself a high school pupil in good standing. Buster Healey, who was among the devoted youths who made the trip to Lynton, afterward said that he had heard that Corrigan was an imported article and that he was far more at home in Marion than in Lynton. That as may be, Corrigan could certainly pitch, as Amesville soon discovered. Not a safety was made off him until the third inning, when Tom Pollock smashed out a two-bagger that produced no result. Corrigan had a slow ball that was the undoing of batsman after batsman. He mixed it up with fast ones and a couple of hooks and had the opposing team standing on their heads. And he fielded so well that, as Sam Craig remarked disgustedly once, the rest of the Lynton team might just as well have remained on the bench.
But Corrigan had an opponent in Tom Pollock that was not to be despised. Perhaps, when all is said, Tom, for once, was outpitched that day if we go by the final score, but there was little to choose between the rival moundsmen. Tom proved better at the bat than did Corrigan, for the latter was a typical pitcher when he went to the plate and swung harmlessly at the first three deliveries and retired in a perfectly matter-of-factway to the bench. If Amesville had trouble hitting Corrigan, Lynton had as much difficulty getting to Tom. Except for that two-bagger of Tom’s, not a hit was made by either side until the fifth. In the fourth two errors by the visitors put a Lynton runner as far as second, but he died there. Joe was guilty of one of those miscues when he dropped a perfectly good throw of Hale’s, and Smith made the other when he fumbled Sam’s throw-down and let the runner steal second. Lynton made errors, too, but nothing came of them until the first of the fifth.
In that inning Sam, the first man up, fouled out to catcher. Joe struck out and Cummings, with two strikes on him, swung desperately at a poor one and rolled it toward third base. Third baseman over-ran it, threw hurriedly and pegged wide of first, and Cummings legged it to second with lots of time to spare. Amesville’s rooters became audible for almost the first time since Sam had made his hit, and Tom Pollock strode to the bat. Discretion seeming the better part of valor, Tom was promptly passed. That brought Gordon Smith up, with runners on first and second, and Gordon was not just the batter Coach Talbot would have chosen for the situation. But the shortstop proved, after all, the man for thejob, for, after cunningly allowing Corrigan to get himself in a hole, he leaned against a fast ball and streaked it into short right, scoring Cummings and placing Tom on third.
Sidney Morris tried very hard to come across, but Corrigan was too much for him, and Sidney fanned. One run, however, looked very big in that game, and Amesville breathed a bit easier until, in the last of the sixth, Lynton tied up the score by a combination of one hit, a barefaced steal of second and a sacrifice fly. One to one the score remained until the eighth. Then Corrigan showed the first signs of weariness and passed Smith. Smith stole second when Morris tried for a hit and missed it, the catcher getting the throw away too late. Morris again fanned and Jack, who had determined to profit by his own advice to Joe, shortened his swing and managed to connect with one of Corrigan’s offerings. The hit was pretty scratchy, but it placed Smith on third and left Jack himself safe on first. Hale fouled off two, spoiling as many attempted steals by Jack, and finally bunted toward the box. Corrigan held Smith at third and threw out the runner at first. With Peddie up there seemed a chance for a tally, for Peddie had been delivering the goods quite regularly. But when Corrigan hadscored two strikes against him the outlook darkened and Sam Craig, coaching at third, sent Smith to the plate on the wind-up. But Corrigan was too old a bird to be unsteadied and he slammed the ball swiftly to the catcher and Smith was nailed a yard away.
Lynton went out in one, two, three order in her half and the ninth started with the score still 1 to 1. Peddie struck out and Sam walked. Joe sacrificed. Cummings hit past third baseman, but Sam Craig was out at the plate on a fine throw-in by left fielder. The tenth inning was profitless to both sides. In the first of the eleventh Corrigan wobbled a little and a base on balls followed by a safe bunt placed two runners on bases. But Morris, Jack, and Steve Hale went out in order. It was Tom Pollock’s turn to let down and he did it until Lynton had men on second and third with but one out. After that, however, Tom steadied, fanning the next batter and causing the succeeding one to pop up a fly to Joe.
It looked very much like a tie game when Peddie had gone out, shortstop to first baseman, and Sam Craig had fanned in the first of the twelfth inning, for the visiting team would have to get the five-twelve train back to Amesville, and it was then well after four o’clock. But many a gamehas been pulled out of the fire with two men down, and this was to prove one of them. Joe went to bat with his mind made up to hit somehow, somewhere. This would, he was sure, be his last chance to do anything worth while against the crafty Mr. Corrigan, and he did want to have something more to show than two weak sacrifices. He had profited by experience and close study of Corrigan’s methods and was heartened by assurance when he gripped his bat and faced the shock-headed twirler. Corrigan seldom pitched the first ball over, and Joe knew it, and so, although he made a fine show of being anxious to swing at it, he let it go by and had his judgment sustained by the umpire’s decision. The next one was a fast ball that looked good until it broke in front of the plate and just escaped a corner. With two balls and no strikes, Corrigan became careful. Joe swung at the third offering and missed it. Corrigan smiled at him, and the catcher, who usually kept up a running fire of comment, told Joe that he was a fine, free swinger, “just like a gate, old man, just like a gate!” Corrigan concluded that the batter was ready to take a chance now and so he uncorked a fast and high one that had Joe feeling anxious until the umpire decided that it was a ball. After that, Corrigan had tomake them good, but, with two down, he wasn’t troubled much. His next offering was one of his famous slow balls, and Joe, having one to spare, let it severely alone. It proved a strike.
“One more, now, just like the last!” called the catcher. “Let’s have it, Jimmy!”
But Joe knew very well that it wouldn’t be like the last at all, that Corrigan would change his pace, and, in all likelihood, put a fast one over in the groove. And that is what happened. And Joe, staking all on his “hunch,” swung and caught it fairly and streaked down the base-path and was waved onward by Toby Williams, who was dancing about in the coacher’s box, and finally pulled up at second, standing, just as the ball came back from right field. Somehow, that unexpected hit changed the luck, it seemed. Cummings got his second hit of the game and sent Joe to third. Tom Pollock was again passed, filling the bases, and Jack Speyer went in to bat for Gordon Smith. Speyer wasn’t any phenomenon with the stick, but he had been known to hit lustily. Perhaps in nine cases out of ten a pinch-hitter proves a broken reed, but this must have been the tenth time, for there was nothing broken about Speyer. Probably the fact that he had not been playing kept him from any awe ofCorrigan. At all events, he let the first ball go past unheeded, untroubledly heard it called a strike, and then swung hard on the next one. Second baseman made a heroic try for it, but it went a foot over his upthrust glove and Joe and Walter Cummings trotted over the home plate.
That ended the scoring. Sidney Morris hit into third baseman’s hands and was an easy out. Then all that Amesville had to do was to retire Lynton in her half of the twelfth, a feat not at all difficult as it proved. Tom struck out the first man, the second laid down a bunt and beat out the throw to first, and the third batsman hit into a double, Smith to Peddie to Joe, and the game was over, the score 3 to 1. Amesville, cheered and cheering, made a wild dash for the station and got the five-twelve train by a minute’s margin.
On the way home Jack tried to sympathise with Frank Foley, but Frank was in a particularly disagreeable frame of mind, and Jack gave him up as a bad job. Instead, huddled in a seat with Joe, hugging his knees ecstatically, he spoke of that bat-case with the air of a proprietor. “I’m two games ahead of him, Joey,” he exulted. “He will have to play in two more than I do now to win, and he will never do it! Not this year!You’ve cabbaged that place for keeps, Joey. Why, even if you dropped half the throws you got, Bat couldn’t do without you! Not after the way you lambasted that old pill today, son! It’s a cinch!”
“You can’t tell,” began Joe.
But Jack would have nothing to do with doubts. “Piffle! It’s all over with Handsome Frank, I tell you. You win!” Jack was silent a moment. Then he laughed rather queerly, and, in answer to Joe’s questioning look, said: “It’s funny, but, do you know, I’m sort of sorry for Frank! Isn’t that silly?”
“So am I,” replied Joe truthfully.
“Well!” Jack took a deep breath and abandoned regrets. “To the victor belong the spoils, as the poet so beautifully puts it! And it’s been a pretty little fight!”
However, had Jack but known it, his sympathy for Frank Foley was, in a measure, at least, somewhat premature!