CHAPTER XIX.
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, butheld 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.”