CHAPTER XXVI A DOUBLE ASSIST

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And now for the finish of the game. When Dick and Varrell made their hurried exit from the field, the sixth inning was just under way, each team beginning over again at the head of its batting list. The cheering that Dick had heard while he was waiting at the steps of Carter was provoked by the successful retirement of the first three Hillbury batters. The three men who headed the Seaton list had already gone out in order. With a balance of one in the score in favor of Hillbury, and hits few and far between, the visitors’ confidence was growing. Every additional zero in the Seaton score now meant another nail in the Seaton coffin.

The seventh began with Poole at the bat. The first ball was a little wide for him, but he thought he could utilize it, and chopped a little liner over the short-stop’s head. When Sudbury came up, Ribot had his pitcher throw two balls in the hope of tempting Phil to try to steal second. Then came a strike and another ball. With three balls called, Phil started on the next pitch with the pitcher’s arm on the old chance of hit and run. Sudbury bunted, and got his base on Ribot’s wild throw to first, while Phil made second easily. This was a business-like beginning that stirred anew the sluggish Seaton throats!

Sands came up to the plate. Did ever captain face such an opportunity! A single would tie the score, a two-base hit would probably win the game. A grounder in the wrong place might result in a double play and the loss of the start this made. Sands did his best, but his best was only a slow grounder toward third, and he sped away to first without much hope of reaching there. Phil had taken a good lead from second, and dashed past Kleindienst, the Hillbury third baseman, just before the latter got the ball and shot it across the diamond to first. Sands was out, but both Phil and Sudbury had advanced a base.

“Can he do it?” said Tompkins, as Waddington faced the pitcher.

“Do what?” asked Hayes, who was stamping the ground with his foot and nervously swinging the bat in his hand.

“Anything but strike out or hit to the in-field,” replied Tompkins. “If he makes a hit, we win the game,—if he doesn’t, we lose. We shan’t get another chance like this.”

Waddington waited until two strikes and three balls had been called. At the next one he let drive with all his power.

“It’s a homer, it’s a homer!” shouted Tompkins, jumping up and down in glee.

“No, a three-bagger,” corrected Hayes, wildly flourishing his bat dangerously near Tompkins’s head.

But it was neither. Far out in the tennis courts that bounded centre-field Franklin threw himself at the flying ball, and clung tight to it, though he fell his length on the ground. He recovered himself and got the ball back in season to hold Sudbury at third, but Phil had crossed the plate.

There was babel now on both sides of the diamond, Seaton cheering the run that tied the score, Hillbury, the brilliant achievement of their fielder.

Hayes was next in order. “Just a little hit, Haysey,” pleaded Tompkins. “Over second will do. Make a hit and I will.”

Hayes’s response was to whack the ball over third baseman’s head for two bases. Sudbury came in with the third run, and Tompkins went out ingloriously by batting an easy ball to the pitcher. The Seaton half of the inning was over, with the score now three to two in her favor.

Hillbury got no farther than third in her half. In the eighth the batsmen on both sides went down like pins before a bowling ball. The pitchers were on their mettle, every player was alert and keen, chance itself seemed to bring the hits into the fielders’ hands. Cunningham sprinted twenty feet to take Robinson’s liner; Watson gathered in a foul right in the midst of the Hillbury benches; Hayes made a one-handed stop of what promised to be a three-base hit. The in-field no longer wasted breath in exhortations; the cheer-leaders no longer tried to lead. The crowd was left to follow its own excited inclination, and incoherent yells took the place of cheers and songs.

The ninth began under the same spell of fast play. Poole went out on a fly to first base, Sudbury struck out, Sands hit to second base, and Hillbury came in for her last chance. Ribot sent a fly well over in short left-field, but Watson ran back and caught it. Kleindienst hit over the second baseman’s head; Haley dropped a fly in short right-field, and took second while Vincent was trying to catch the runner at third. With only one man out, and runners at second and third, the Hillbury cause looked bright. The blue banners waved wildly; but the Hillbury leaders brought back their companies once more to the old cheers, and gave Webster a ringing volley as he stepped up to the plate, bat in hand. Into every heart over the whole field, among players and audience alike, crept the conviction that the two runs necessary to give the victory to Hillbury were coming in, and that Webster’s hit was to bring them.

Phil drew in nearer the diamond. He knew Webster’s batting record like a book,—the note-book he had kept so long. If Webster made a hit at all, it would be in short left-field, out of reach of both third and short-stop.

Crack! went the bat. The Hillburyites rose and sent forth their shout of victory, as the ball sailed safely over the third baseman’s head. Haley started immediately from second; Kleindienst, on third, waited a little longer to make sure that Watson would not repeat his previous play. When he, too, saw that the ball was out of Watson’s reach, he threw care to the winds and started home, with Haley rounding the base only a dozen feet behind him.

Beyond third neither coachers nor runners thought to look. Sands himself, who had thrown his mask aside and now stood helpless at the plate, steeling himself to bear the sight of those two winning runs which were to transform a game almost won into a game certainly lost,—Sands himself had abandoned hope, and was watching the flight of the ball with indifference, stunned with the bitterness and humiliation of defeat.

Then, as he gazed, an abrupt change came over him. His whole figure grew radiant as with a mighty and unexpected joy. The hit was over the third baseman’s head, it was true; but the left-fielder, well within his usual position, had run rapidly forward to meet the ball, taken it on the bounce, steadied himself for a throw, and, with that splendid shoulder drive which Sands had so often envied, sent it straight to the waiting catcher. It came whizzing past the shoulder of the unsuspecting Kleindienst, and landed safely in Sands’s mitt. Leisurely, as if there were no chance of error; easily, as if such plays were a matter of everyday practice; with a smile on his lips at the folly of those who feared for him and his team,—the Seaton captain stooped and tagged the first runner as he slid in, then stepped forward to meet the second, plunging at the heels of the first. The two astonished men were out on the throw to the plate, and it was still Seaton’s game!

The score:—

Seaton AB R BH TB PO A E
Vincent, r. f. 4 0 1 2 1 0 0
Robinson, 2b. 4 0 0 0 3 3 0
Watson, 3b. 4 0 0 0 2 1 1
Poole, l. f. 4 2 2 2 2 2 0
Sudbury, c. f. 4 1 1 1 2 0 0
Sands, c. 4 0 0 0 7 1 0
Waddington, lb. 3 0 1 2 7 0 0
Hayes, s. s. 3 0 1 2 2 2 1
Tompkins, p. 3 0 0 0 1 1 0
Totals 33 3 6 9 27 9 2
Hillbury
Stevens, l. f. 4 0 0 0 2 0 0
Hood, s. s. 4 1 0 0 0 3 0
Franklin, c.f. 4 0 0 0 2 0 0
Ribot, c. 4 1 1 3 6 1 2
Kleindienst, 3b. 4 0 1 1 2 3 0
Haley, r. f. 4 0 1 1 1 0 0
Webster, lb. 4 0 2 2 11 0 0
Cunningham, 2b. 3 0 2 3 3 2 1
Millan, p. 3 0 0 0 0 2 0
Totals 34 2 7 10 27 11 3
Innings 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Seaton 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0-3
Hillbury 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0-2

Phil did not walk in from the field after that throw. How he came in he could not have told, for the wild horde from the Seaton benches met him near third, and heaved him into the air, and fought for him, and hustled him to and fro on the diamond like a hockey puck darting over the ice. When at length he was released, he sought long for Dick and Varrell, sadly disappointed that his two best friends should so unaccountably fail him at the moment of his triumph.

Threatened at last by the waiting players with being seized by force and crammed into the barge, Phil reluctantly abandoned his search and climbed in over the knees of his impatient friends. They drove down, hilarious, through hilarious crowds. No one who has never had the experience can picture to himself the delicious abandon with which a team, after long months of training and suspense, gives itself up to the glorious joy of victory. An exultant fire of explanations, reminders, and compliments ran from one end of the barge to the other.

“Do you know, Phil,” said Sands, giving the boy a hearty slap on the knee, “I never expect to feel again quite such a shock of happiness as I had when I saw the ball light in your claws and start home again with that old ‘gravity rise.’ When I felt it in my hands, I could have whooped! And to see that poor Kleindienst come sliding in so sweetly, with the ball there ahead of him, and Haley at his heels, rushing plumb at it,—and both thinking they had won the game! It was rich!”

“How did you get there, anyway, Phillie?” asked Vincent. “You belonged a long way out.”

“I knew where he was likely to hit and lay in for him,” said Phil, modestly.

“The note-book again!” shouted Tompkins, “the miserable, little, dirty note-book! Why, I pitched the whole game on that book! We ought to have it bound in red morocco and hung up in the trophy case with the ball.”

They were just passing the walk that led to the Principal’s house, when the twentieth howl of appreciation rolled up to them from a loyal group.

“Look there!” cried Watson. “Did you ever see that combination before? There’s aristocrat Varrell and that queer little Eddy ahead, and Dick Melvin and Bosworth behind. Something must have happened to bring those fellows together.”

At the sound of the cheering Dick wheeled quickly and waved his hand to the victors in the barge, then turned again to his charge. Bosworth did not raise his eyes from the ground.

Tompkins gave Phil a questioning look, and Phil answered with a smile and a nod. He guessed now why his friends had failed him at the field.

The Main Street of Seaton.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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