CHAPTER XLV
THE PITCHER’S FINAL TEST.
“I’m afraid those Boston fellows are due to get their revenge, all right,” said Bill Brady, on the morning of the Fourth of July, the day for the game in which Briggs, of Harvard, and Jim Phillips, of Yale, were again to measure their abilities as pitchers. “We’ve had a little too much on our minds this last week to do much practicing.”
“We’ll give them a fight for it, anyhow,” said Dick Merriwell. “We’ll be off for Sweden, pretty soon, those of us that are going, and I’d like to celebrate the glorious Fourth here first in the right way. I suppose it’s Harvard’s holiday just as much as it is ours, but I remember that our ancestors did pretty well in spite of difficulties and things that were enough to discourage most people. If they hadn’t stuck to their guns through anything that came up, we wouldn’t have much celebrating to do nowadays, you know.”
The fact that the game with the Boston team was scheduled for the great national holiday insured an enormous crowd to witness it. Not enormous, perhaps, compared with some games that Jim had pitched in, for he had seen the Polo Grounds, in New York, crowded more than once when he played there, but still very large for New Haven. And the news that Dick Merriwell himself was to take part had added enormously to the attractiveness of the game. Dick had not been seen in a regular game for a long time, but his reputation had endured and had, naturally, only been enhanced by his remarkable success as a coach. Old Yale men had come up for the game, and a great crowd had also come down from Boston to cheer the team from the cradle of independence on to victory.
“Those Harvard men are doing a lot of talking about the way Harvard men started the revolution,” said Bill Brady, with a grin. “But we Yale men can remember Nathan Hale and a few others that did their share. So I guess we can just arrange to fight this game out on the line of what is going to happen to-day, rather than of what the old fellows did a hundred years ago or so. We were even with them then, but I think we’re a little ahead of them this year.”
Dick Merriwell, by unanimous consent, was acting as captain of the New Haven team, and in the practice before the game it was at once evident that this contest was likely to be a much more scientific one than the first meeting between the two teams. The presence of so many of the players of the two best college teams of the year insured a well-played game, and as the cheers went up from the crowded stands at every good play, the crowd settled itself down in anticipation of a rattling game, close, and fought out to the last minute.
Jim Phillips, as he warmed up, felt that he was in good condition. He felt that he had taken the measure of Briggs, and, while he had an intense respect for the powers of the noted Harvard pitcher, he was sure that he was his master. Confidence is half the battle in any sport, and there was nothing boastful about Jim’s feeling. He knew just what he could do, and he thought he knew, also, what Briggs could do.
But when the game began, he found himself in difficulties at once. The first inning was easy. The Harvard men went out in one, two, three order, but he saw Reid, who had batted first, looking curiously at him after he had been retired on a screaming line drive, that Harry Maxwell caught, and he knew the reason.
“I don’t know what’s the matter,” he said to Brady, as they sat on the bench, “but my arm seems to have gone back on me altogether. I feel all right, but I couldn’t get the ball breaking right. Did you notice it?”
“There wasn’t any jump on the ball,” admitted Brady. “I couldn’t make it out. Never mind—you’ll be all right when the game gets going.”
“I hope so,” said Jim. “It’s a good thing those Harvard people didn’t get on to me in that inning, though. If they’d only known it, they could have knocked those balls I pitched all over the lot. They just thought I was pitching the way I had before. But that won’t keep up. I’m due for an awful lacing unless I can get that ball going right pretty soon. Reid is on to it already. Did you see him edge right over to Bowen after he sent that fly to Harry?”
Harry Maxwell, in Sherman’s absence, now led the batting order, and he began with a crashing single to right.
Dick Merriwell, facing Briggs for the first time, sent the crowd wild, for he landed on the first ball pitched, and drove it clean over the center-field fence for a home run. Three runs for New Haven, with Jim Phillips in the box, looked like a sure victory.
But Jim knew that his arm was bad. The second inning passed safely, although his control was still so poor when he pitched a curve ball that he contented himself with fast, straight balls, that deceived the Bostonians simply because they didn’t expect them.
Reid came up again in the third inning, when one man was out. Jim had thought that he was going to get safely through that session, but Reid wasted no time at all. He saw a straight ball coming, and sent it whistling past Carter, on third, for a three-base hit. It was the beginning of the deluge. Jim’s curves would not break, and five hits in rapid succession gave Harvard four runs. Jim steadied then for a moment, and struck out a batter, but he was still in trouble, although he felt that he was beginning to find himself anew, and before the inning was over three more Harvard men had scored.
“Whew!” whistled Dick Merriwell. “You’ve been a long time coming to it, Jim, but you certainly have got an awful lot out of your system all at once. I was beginning to think you never were going to have one of those historic bad innings.”
“I was afraid it was coming,” said Jim. “My arm hasn’t been right since the game began. But, as a matter of fact, I was pitching better, when they were slugging the ball so hard, than I had before. They simply didn’t get on to how easy I was. If they had, they could have made all those runs before.”
“Want to go out?” said Dick, looking at him keenly. He knew, although, perhaps, Jim himself did not, that this was the real test of Jim’s quality as a pitcher, long delayed, but to be faced, now that it had come. For the first time, Jim was in a bad hole, and had no one to blame for it but himself. He had faced pinches before, but always with the steadying remembrance that it was errors that had made the trouble. Now he had to look to himself for the cause.
Jim looked up at the universal coach.
“I think I can do better now,” he said, “if you let me stay in to finish it. That’s up to you, of course, Mr. Merriwell. But my arm got straightened out, I think. I don’t know what was the matter. But I feel as if I could stop them now.”
“Good boy,” said Dick Merriwell heartily. “That’s what I wanted you to say. Go in and do the best you can. It isn’t getting beaten that does the mischief—it’s the way you take it. Every pitcher has bad days. You’ve been wonderfully lucky not to have had that experience earlier in the year.”
Reid was facing Jim when the New Haven team had to take the field again, and there was a murmur of surprise when it was seen that Jim was to continue pitching.
“They must be looking for trouble,” said one man to another, near the New Haven bench. “When a pitcher gets a lacing like that, it’s time to send him to the scrap heap.”
“What’s the difference?” asked the other man. “With Briggs pitching the way he is, they’ll never make up that lead, anyhow, and they might as well let this chap Phillips take his medicine. Just proves what I’ve said all season—he’s the most overrated pitcher in any of the colleges.”
They were Harvard men, those two. But they did not quite understand Jim’s true caliber.
Reid was sure that he was going to make another hit. But he didn’t. He tried hard enough. Jim was too much for him.
All Jim’s cunning seemed to have returned; and, after a pretty duel of wits between them, Reid was worsted, and trotted back to the bench, a victim on strikes, filled with new admiration for the Yale pitcher.
“That chap never knows when he’s beaten, anyhow,” he said to Bowen. “He didn’t have a thing with him but his glove in the last inning. And now he’s smoking them over just as if he didn’t know what it was to have one of his benders hit.”
“He’s got nerve,” agreed Bowen. “That’s what counts. All the skill in the world won’t do a pitcher any good if he’s yellow. I thought he’d gone up in the air in that last inning. But I guess it’s a good thing we hit him while we had the chance. If I am not mistaken, we’ll have our own troubles getting another hit off him in this game.”
And, to the surprise of the crowd and both teams, Bowen was right. Jim grew stronger and better as the game wore on, and inning after inning saw the Boston team retired without a hit or a run. In the fifth inning, Briggs wavered for a moment and gave a base on balls to the man who preceded Brady at the bat. Big Bill, sore and angry at the pounding Jim had suffered, swung his big bat with terrific effect, and New Haven had one more run as the result of his slashing triple. But he was left on third himself, and the score was still seven to four in favor of Boston.
It wasn’t at all the sort of game the fans had looked for. A victory for one team or the other by a score of one to nothing, or two to one, had been anticipated, and the course of the game was a stunning surprise, for neither Briggs nor Jim Phillips had been half as effective as their friends had expected them to be.
With the long lead the Boston team had taken, Dick Merriwell had decided on straight hitting as the best means of snatching a victory. But, in the seventh inning, he decided that a change in tactics was necessary. Briggs had improved, and was making it almost impossible for the Yale men to hit him safely.
“We’ve got to try to fool them,” said Dick. “They think now that we’re going to hit out at everything. So we’ll start in by trying to bunt. It may not work at first, but if you keep that sort of thing up long enough, it is apt to disorganize any team not especially prepared for it.”
In the seventh inning, the Bostonians met the new tactics successfully, and repelled the attack. The first three men up for Yale, Brady, Phillips, and Harry Maxwell, all bunted, and all were thrown out at first, though it was a close decision on Maxwell, and one that any captain less sportsmanlike than Dick Merriwell might well have objected to.
“Never mind!” said Dick. “We’ll keep on with it. It didn’t work then, but it may come out better next time.”
Jim, pitching with terrific speed, disposed of the Boston team easily in the first half of the eighth inning, and then it was Jackson’s turn at the bat. His bunt was a beauty, a slow, trickling, deceptive teaser of a bunt, that crept along the third-base line, and gave him plenty of time to reach first.
“Bunt,” said Dick, to Carter, as he lifted his own bat. “We’ll keep right on.”
Obeying the signaled order, Jackson sprinted for second as Carter bunted gently in front of the plate. Briggs thought there was a chance to catch Jackson at second, and threw there instead of making the easy and certain play at first. His throw was a second too late, and both runners were safe.
“Bunt, when you come up,” said Dick Merriwell, to Green, who followed him.
Then he stepped to the plate himself, and the Boston infielder, sure that he would try to drive in a run, backed out. But Dick smiled quietly, and bunted down the third-base line. Too late the fielder came in for the ball. The bunt had been perfectly placed, and the bases were full, with none out.
Again was the same trick worked. A bunt, with the bases full and none out, looked like suicide, but it was not. Jackson raced for the plate as the ball left Briggs’ hand, and was on top of it when Green chopped the ball toward first base. The Boston first baseman, confused and rattled, made a foolish attempt to catch him at the plate, and again all hands were safe, with the bases full—and one run in.
Now Dick Merriwell shifted his tactics, choosing the exact moment for the change. Bill Brady was at the bat, and as the Harvard players crept in on the grass of the infield, ready to break up any attempt at a bunt and turn it into a double play, Bill pushed the ball gently over the shortstop’s head. It rolled with tantalizing slowness to the outfield, and, before it was returned, Carter and Dick Merriwell had scored, and New Haven was only one run behind. Brayson, the next batter, smashed out a sharp single, and Green crossed the plate with the tying run.
Tuthill hit into a sharp double play, the result of a wonderful stop by Briggs and Bowen’s lightning relay to first, and then Jim Phillips came to the bat. Brayson had reached third, and Jim, thirsting with the desire to put his team ahead, had a great chance. The crowd was wild with excitement.
Jim was patient. He waited until Briggs sent up a slow ball that failed to break just right. Then he hit hard, and raced toward first. The Boston shortstop made a great stop, and Jim, as he sped toward first, knew that the play would be close. He ran as hard as he could, but the ball was a step before him, and, just as he touched the bag, he heard the thud of the ball in the fielder’s mitt. He was out—and the score was still tied.
But there was a wild yell from the crowd. He heard the umpire yell “Safe!”
“But I wasn’t safe,” he said to himself, as he turned back to the base. His teammates were jumping up and down by the bench. The Boston players were looking dejected. Deliberately, Jim left the bag and walked toward the umpire.
“You were mistaken,” he said. “The ball reached first before I did.”
The Harvard first baseman, amazed, followed him, the ball still in his hand. Accidentally he touched Jim’s shoulder with the ball. The umpire saw it.
“I called you safe before,” he said, “but you’re out now. You left the bag, and you’ve been touched. Batter up!”
“Oh, I say,” cried the Harvard first baseman, “I don’t want to take advantage of a technicality.”
“It’s all right,” said Jim. “He can’t reverse himself, I suppose. And it comes out all right. I was out, you know.”
“We’ll win, anyhow,” said Dick. “I’m afraid Briggs is up in the air.”
It was true. Jim had no difficulty in blanking the visiting team in the first half of the ninth inning, and when the New Haven team came to the bat, singles by Maxwell and Jackson, followed by a long two-bagger by Carter, quickly sent the winning run over the plate. New Haven was the winner of the game, eight to seven. And Jim Phillips had proved, not only that he was as good as ever, but that, after losing his grip, he could come back—the hardest thing of all to do.
“Dick Merriwell at the Olympics,” by Burt L. Standish, is the next title, No. 212, of the Merriwell Series.
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In order that there may be no confusion, we desire to say that the books listed below will be issued during the respective months in New York City and vicinity. They may not reach the readers at a distance promptly, on account of delays in transportation.
To be published in January, 1929.
To be published in February, 1929.
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