The Specter twirler having become practically unhittable, the ninth inning gave the Blue Stockings nothing further than their slim lead of one tally. The final half opened with Dutch Schwartz, leading the Specter’s list, the first man to face Locke.
“Whiff him, Lefty!” begged a few fans. “You can do it! Oh, you Lefty! You’re the boy!”
With an expression of mingled determination and disdain for these pleading rooters, Schwartz planted himself at the plate, having first knocked the dirt out of his spikes with the butt of his heavy club.
“Take it easy, son,” called Spider Grant, getting into position to cover plenty of territory in the vicinity of first. “You know him. If you can get him to start with, it will be as good as two down.”
Locke gave his captain a cold stare, and his lips moved. It seemed that he muttered some sullen retort, but Grant could not distinguish the words.
So long did the pitcher stand in that position, gazing straight at Spider, that the tense crowd began to wonder, and the umpire called “Play” twice. Finally, lifting his “meat hand” with the soiled horsehide gripped in his fingers, Lefty turned his eyes on Nelson, who crouched promptly, and signaled.
Wagging his bat loosely, almost lightly, Dutch Schwartz was in position to step into anything handed up. Possibly delaying in an effort to get the batter’s nerve, Lefty made no further move until he provoked a protest from the Specter captain. Then, like one awaking from a half trance, the pitcher balanced himself on one foot, swung far back, brought his body over and forward, and made the delivery. Never had anyone present witnessed a wilder pitch. It was a wonder that the ball did not go clean over the top of the grandstand.
“Oh, oh, oh!” shouted the coachers, while the startled crowd broke into exclamations. “Look a’ that! Get a scaling ladder, Schwartzy.”
The Dutchman grinned and tapped the pentagon with the end of his bat.
A boy recovered the ball and threw it to Nelson, who made a pretense of looking it over before he tossed it to Locke.
On the bench the watchful Billy Orth, actually shivering, whispered to himself: “Now, I wonder if he did that on purpose—I wonder. It doesn’t seem likely. If he did, he’s getting to be a good subject for the foolish factory.”
Others beside Billy were wondering. While they were thus engaged Locke pitched again. This time he whipped a smoker over, and Schwartz fouled it against the right-field bleachers.
“That makes you even, old boy!” called Grant, ere he turned to receive the ball from the fielder who had chased it down. But, somehow, his voice seemed to lack the ring of genuine cheerfulness.
Even the least astute spectator could see that the Blue Stockings were all keyed up to a point of tension little short of snapping. Something in the very air seemed to presage a break. And that meant—disaster.
It was such a situation, however, as provides one of the intense thrills of the game, the sort of a thrill and suspense which makes it so fascinating to its thousands upon thousands of followers. It is the desire to feel just this keen distress and uncertainty, intensely delicious in its poignant pain, that lures a fan to the ball park day after day to witness dead and uninteresting games, hoping always for the pinch that will set them swallowing hard to keep their hearts from choking them.
Frowning, Lefty pitched again. The ball seemed to make a yellow streak through the air, and Nelson, though he held it, was actually set back the least fraction by the terrific impact of the sphere in his big mitt.
Schwartz had struck again—and missed.
“Smoke! Smoke!” shouted Dalton, laughing suddenly in his old-time way. “He couldn’t see it, my boy! Once more, and you’ve got him!”
Indeed, Laughing Larry had suddenly decided that the pitcher he had doubted might be playing a clever game, even though the wisdom of it could be questioned. Nor was Larry the only one with confidence suddenly revived.
“Such speed!” muttered Billy Orth. “And his control was perfect—that time.”
“That’s two on him!” howled an excited man from the middle stand. “He’s your meat, Lefty! You never did fail us!”
Nelson gave his tingling bare hand a shake and returned the ball to Locke, who seemed to perceive it just in time to thrust out his gloved right and catch it a bit awkwardly. They saw him shake his head from side to side with a queer motion and pass the back of his left hand across his sweat-moistened forehead. His face was drawn into hard, set lines, which seemed like lines of pain. Before looking again for Nelson’s signal, he walked all the way around the slab, staring down at the ground as if seeking for something he had dropped. And these queer movements brought the uncertainty leaping back into the heart of Laughing Larry and others.
There was speed in the next one—speed enough, it is true; but Schwartz could not have reached it had his bat measured two feet more than it did. It went past Nelson, and clean to the stand, from which it rebounded.
“Wait it out, Dutch,” urged a coacher. “He’ll hand you a pass yet.”
Schwartz knew how to wait, as he proved by ignoring the next pitch, which barely failed to cut a corner. Three balls were called—three balls and two strikes.
Again Lefty gave his head that queer, side-swaying shake. His teeth were set and his lips drawn back. Receiving the ball, he held it gripped tightly in both hands beneath his chin, while he leaned forward to get the catcher’s sign.
Upon the crowd fell a great hush, in the midst of which the voices of Locke’s teammates, calling encouragement, could be distinctly heard. Schwartz, his confidence apparently unmarred, waited, sturdily alert.
Lefty nodded, swung backward, swung forward, slashed the air with his arm—pitched. It was a hook-curve, sharp, and breaking toward the outside corner. Schwartz swung his bat as if it weighed no more than a toothpick. But, marvelous hitter though he was, that curve fooled him, and he was out.