The next evening they were at it again. Sidney was able to pitch an out-curve and a drop and had besides what he called his “slow ball.” The latter, however, didn’t differ much, so far as Tom could see, from any other ball. Besides, Sidney’s slow ball was an uncertain affair since it didn’t always materialise when he expected it to. Of course Sidney was willing and even eager to show Tom what he knew, but, unfortunately, Sidney didn’t know a great deal about the art of pitching a baseball, and what he did know he found it very difficult to expound. He showed Tom how to hold his fingers around the ball to deliver an out-curve, but as the “snap” and the “follow-through” have an immense effect on the ball’s flight, Tom’s efforts weren’t very successful. Still, he did manage, after awhile, to impart an out-curve to the ball and got so he could do it perhaps four times out of ten. The other times the ball generally went wild. Sidney tried to tell him about the motion of his arm and letting the ball slide off the tips of the first two fingers, but Sidney wasn’t very clear in his own head as to the philosophy of it, and so made a poor teacher. When Tom’s arm was tired, Sidney took his place and practised his slow ball with no great success and afterward tried to fathom the intricacies of the in-curve. This, though, was too much for him.

“I’m going to get Thorny Brooks to show me how to do it,” he said finally. “He’s got a dandy in-shoot. You ought to see him pitch, Tom.”

“I’d like to,” Tom answered. “Maybe some day when you’re playing a game I’ll get out and see it. I wish I could play, Sid.”

“I know. It’s too bad you can’t. You’d make a good player, I’ll bet. You can field and bat better than two or three fellows on the team right now. I don’t suppose Cummings and Wright would let you off in the afternoon, would they?”

“Then I wouldn’t be there at all,” laughed Tom. “When do you fellows play your first game?”

“About two weeks from now. First games don’t amount to much, though; they’re only practices. You wait till we tackle Lynton High or Petersburg. Then you’ll see real games!”

They went back through the twilight, passing the ball between them as they walked, Sidney progressing backward and having several narrow escapes from colliding with poles, hydrants, and pedestrians. Afterward they sat on the front steps until the chill of evening drove them upstairs to Sidney’s room. Then they “wirelessed,” taking turns at examining each other on the Continental code with tablet and pencil and then ticking off on the practice key:

“Dash, dot, dash, dot, pause, dot, dash, pause, dash, dot, pause, dash, dot, dash, dash, pause, dash, dash, dash, pause, dot, dot, dash, pause, dot, dash, dash, dot, pause, dot, dot, pause, dash, pause, dash, dot, dash, dot, pause, dot, dot, dot, dot, pause, dot, dash, pause, dash, dot, pause, dash, dash, dash, pause, dot, dot, dash, pause, dash, pause, dot, dot, dot, pause, dot, dot, dot, dot, pause, dash, dash, dash, pause, dash, dash, dash, pause, dash, pause, dot, dot, dash, dash, dot, dot.”

But Tom, who was listening to the clicking key, was unusually stupid this evening. I think his mind was more on pitching a baseball than on telegraphy. He frowned uncertainly.

“‘Can you pinch’ something,” he said. “I didn’t get it.”

“‘Pitch,’ you chump! ‘Can you pitch an out-shoot?’”

“Oh! Dash, dot—dash, dash, dash!”

Sidney laughed. “No! Here, you try me.”

At ten o’clock they performed the regular procedure of getting the time and then Tom said good night and walked home through the quiet streets, briskly because the evenings were still chill, thinking much of the way about that elusive out-curve!

The next day he searched through the pile of little paper-clad volumes of the Athletic Library which were a part of his stock at the store and was lucky enough to find “How to Pitch a Base-Ball.” In the interims of waiting on customers he studied the book. But it didn’t seem just what he wanted. He got a ball and followed the directions given for holding it, alternately frowning over the text and his fingers, and wished he might pitch it and see what would happen. After awhile he quietly stole down to the basement, switched on the lights, and let drive at the partition that hid the plumbing shop. If the ball curved he didn’t discern it. What he did discern was Jim Hobb’s black head stuck through the doorway in the partition and Jim’s incensed countenance.

“Hi! What in thunder are you doing, Tom?”

“I threw a baseball.”

“Well, you knocked a wrench off the shelf and nearly bust my hand open. You get out of here with your baseballs!”

Tom recovered the ball and returned upstairs disappointedly to find Mr. Wright fuming and fussing because Tom had left the counter and two small boys wanted to buy a catcher’s mitt.

But that evening, after depositing a dime in the firm’s treasury as the price of the handbook, Tom took “How to Pitch a Base-Ball” to supper with him, propped it against the sugar-bowl and, since the other boarders had gone and he had the dining-room to himself, studied it assiduously from soup to pie. So eager was he to practise the book’s teachings that he took a car out to Alameda Avenue, instead of walking, and haled Sidney at once to the vacant lot, exhibiting the volume on the way. Sidney was not greatly impressed with it.

“I don’t believe you can learn how to pitch out of a book,” he said pessimistically. “You have to—to just keep trying.”

“Of course you do, but you’ve got to know how to hold the ball, haven’t you? This tells you how to do that, all right, only it isn’t very plain. I thought if you’d read what it said, I’d try and do it. You see, when I try to read and fix my fingers at the same time, I always lose my place and get all mixed up.”

So Sidney good-naturedly found the instructions for pitching an out-curve and read them off while Tom, frowning intently, curved his fingers about the ball. “‘Grasp the ball firmly,’” recited Sidney, “‘between the thumb and the first two fingers.’”

“Uh-uh,” grunted Tom.

“‘Hold the third and four fingers back toward the palm.’”

“All right.”

“‘Bring the hand up over the shoulder in the usual manner——’”

“What’s the usual manner?” demanded Tom.

“Why, I suppose just as if you were going to throw the ball straight. ‘The back of the hand being turned away from you.’”

“Yes.”

“‘In delivering the ball, bring the back of the hand underneath as the arm is dropped, letting the ball roll off the surface of the confining fingers, which imparts to it the rotary motion necessary to make it curve to the pitcher’s left.’ That sounds crazy to me!”

“Me too. But here goes!”

The ball shot away and the boys watched it eagerly. There was undoubtedly a slight tendency toward an out-curve, but certainly not enough to fool the stupidest batsman. But Tom was pleased.

“That’s the idea, all right,” he declared jubilantly. “Now we’ll try it again.” Sidney obligingly recovered the ball, which, luckily, had struck the fence instead of going through any of the numerous holes in it. He tossed it to Tom, and Tom again carefully and thoughtfully arranged his fingers about it, poised it over his shoulder, and swept it forward. But this time something was very wrong, for the ball swooped down to earth some fifteen feet distant, struck an empty tin can, and bounded off into the street.

“I’ll chase it!” said Tom.

“No, you stay there,” laughed Sidney, “and study about it. I’ll get it.”

“What I’d like to know,” said Tom, when Sidney was back once more, “is what makes it curve.”

“Why, it curves because you hold it so it will!”

“But why should it? Just because I hold it with two fingers instead of three or four, why should it curve to the left?”

“Because when you let go of it you—wait a minute!” Sidney found his place in the book. “Because you ‘impart to it the rotary motion necessary to make it curve to the pitcher’s left.’”

“Well, but why?”

“Oh, shut up,” sighed Sidney. “You’re too inquisitive. It—it just does, I suppose.”

“Nothing ‘just does’ without a reason,” replied Tom seriously. “And I’m going to find out why. Seems to me if I knew why a ball curves one time and doesn’t curve another, I’d get the hang of it better. Read that stuff again, Sid.”

This time—Eureka! A veritable out-curve plainly visible to the naked eye, as Sidney triumphantly announced. And after that two more in succession! And then something went wrong again and the ball acted quite foolishly.

“You’re tired, I guess,” Sidney said. “Let me have a try while you rest up.”

So Sidney “put over” a few out-curves, making the astounding discovery that he and the book were quite in agreement as to the manner of holding the ball—a fact which he had doubted before,—and subsequently tried a drop with fair success. That slow ball wouldn’t materialise this evening. Then Tom sent Sidney to the fence with the mitt and tried again and again to make that obstinate leather-covered sphere do as he wanted it to. Once or twice it did, but the trouble was that Tom couldn’t discover why it did; or why it more often didn’t. Still, it could be done, and, moreover, he had done it, and that was something! Sidney wanted him to attempt an in-shoot or a drop or some of the other deliveries set forth in the book, but Tom shook his head.

“I’m going to learn that out-curve thing first,” he said doggedly. “When I get so I can do that every time, I’ll try a new one. Some day I’m going to be able to pitch ’em all. First, though, I’m going to find out why—why——”

“Why is a curve,” said Sidney helpfully.

“There’s some reason. There must be. There’s a perfectly good scientific reason for it, Sid.”

“Huh! What if there is? I’ll bet you won’t be able to curve a ball any better for knowing why,” jeered Sidney. “The way to learn to pitch is to pitch. Come on home.”