CHAPTER IX. A JUMP IN BASEBALL AND THE RESULT.
The fact that the Freshman diamond lies very close to the running track, and more particularly that the right field foul-line impinges on the back stretch of the track, by a peculiar circumstance had a very important influence on the college life of Frank Armstrong. And so do great things turn on small incidents.
On a particular day in May, Freshman baseball practice was in full swing. Frank was still an humble outfielder with little hope of a promotion to the pitcher's box, for three men of more experience were ahead of him. Thomas, however, attracted by the bearing of Frank, had held him on the squad in spite of the fact that he was not an exceptional fielder. He was attentive to instructions and because of his willingness and earnestness to do whatever was told him to do, held his place as a substitute right fielder.
"In these days," the coach told him, "no pitcher can get along without a good assortment of curves. Your straight ball is fine, but they get to it. You can curve the ball but you can't get it over the plate when you do curve it."
"That's my trouble, but I'll learn if you'll show me," said Frank, "that is, I'll do my best to learn."
But Thomas was not a pitcher and therefore could not show him just how to get that puzzling break to the ball which assured a pitcher of success with even a moderately good control. So Frank languished in the outfield much to the disgust of Turner and the Codfish who thought he was being done an injustice.
A practice game was in progress between the First and Second nines, and the First nine was at bat. Frank was playing right field. Down along the first base line came a sizzling grounder just inside the base. An undercut to the ball caused it, when it struck the turf, to pull off into foul ground. At once the man on second shot for home. Frank started at the crack of the bat, while the batter set sail for first base with the evident intention of making second at least on the hit which seemed good for two easy bases.
Frank, who was playing closer in than he should have been, went for the grounder with all his speed, but seeing no hope of intercepting it by ordinary means, leaped in the air to a point in the line of the rolling ball. His feet, as they struck the ground, formed a barrier which the ball struck and jumped into the air in easy reach of his hand. He recovered his balance, seized the ball and drove it like lightning to the plate, catching the runner. The catcher snapped the ball to second, completing the double.
It was a pretty play and brought forth hand-clapping from the two score of bystanders who were watching the game.
Now it chanced that the trainer of the track team, Johnny Black by name, was looking over his runners as they loped around the back stretch of the track. His eye for the moment was off his half-milers, and was attracted by Armstrong's leap for the rolling ball. He crossed the track to the Freshman outfield, searching for the mark of Frank's cleats when he left the ground. Having found the starting point, he searched carefully till he found the marks of his landing, which happened to be on a bit of ground bare of turf where the cleat marks showed plainly. A ball whizzed past his ear, but he paid no attention, and even the shout of the Freshman coach that he was in the field of play apparently had no effect upon him. He measured the distance of Armstrong's jump with his eye, then stepped it deliberately.
"Hey, right-fielder," demanded Johnny, as Frank, the batting side having now been retired, trotted toward the plate, "what's your name?"
"Armstrong," shouted that individual over his shoulder.
"Come here, Armstrong," said the trainer in peremptory tones.
Frank halted and went back to him.
"You look to me like a jumper. What are you doing over here when you can jump 18 feet with baseball clothes on?" he demanded.
"Trying to play ball the best I know how."
"Any chance to make it?" said the trainer as he walked along toward the plate while the First team went to their places in the field.
"Not very good looking now," returned Frank. "I'm sort of a seventeenth sub-pitcher and outfielder."
"So! I want you over at the track for a day or two. You ought to jump a mile. Say, Thomas," this to the coach, "let me have Armstrong for a day or two. I'm in an awful hole for jumpers and he ought to make one or I miss my guess. If he doesn't turn out right, you can have him back again. If he does, you'll never get him!"
"That's right, come and take my men away from me," grumbled Thomas. "But I can spare him just now as he is a pitcher and I've got three pretty good ones. Send him back here if he doesn't make good."
"All the work I'll ask him to do in training for the jump, if he has the goods, won't prevent him from working with you if he wants to, but I want him first."
"All right," said Thomas. "Armstrong, report to Black to-morrow afternoon, and when you have shown him how far you can't jump, come back here for what practice you can get."
"All right, sir," returned Frank.
"Two o'clock to-morrow at the track house. Bring a track suit with you and jumping shoes if you have them."
"All right, I'll be there," said Frank but he did not relish the change. His heart was set on baseball, and it was a great disappointment to him to be pulled into the track work. But his motto was to do the best that was in him without question, which is the starting point for success in most things.
The coming of the Freshman jumper did not create much interest on the track squad. His jumping did not please the trainer.
"Your form is bad," Black told him. "In jumping, form is everything. You may get to twenty-one or twenty-two feet the way you are going, but that will be the end of it. You must get higher in the air at the take-off."
Frank worked hard to master the new style. In school he had jumped naturally and without much coaching, but felt himself that he was not getting his greatest distance. He redoubled his efforts but could not lengthen out beyond nineteen feet or a little better. Then he began to fall below that even.
"You're jumping like an old brindle cow," said Black one day. "Are your legs sore?"
"My shins feel as if they would crack every time I land in the pit," said Frank, feeling the offending legs gingerly.
"Why in thunder didn't you tell me that before? You can't work at the broad jump the same as you do at football or baseball. Lay off for a day or two and keep off your feet."
The rest did Frank a world of good for when he returned to the jumping pit he cleared over twenty feet in his first trial, much to the trainer's delight. Thereafter he was watched with the closest attention by Black. In the spring games which came the last week in April he won third place in the handicap broad jump; and after a hard fight succeeded in beating out Warrington, the Freshman jumper who had done the best work up to that time.
Two weeks later at the Princeton Freshman meet Frank won second place with a jump of 21 feet 5 inches, and first place in the Harvard Freshman games a week later, bettering his mark by three inches.
Armstrong was ineligible, of course, for the 'Varsity meets with Princeton and Harvard, but kept at work perfecting his form and watching closely the work of Hotchkiss, the Junior, who was a consistent performer around 22 feet 6 inches, and who occasionally approached 23 feet. But as Frank daily increased his marks, the interest of Hotchkiss waned.
The Intercollegiates came and went, and Hotchkiss maintained his position as Intercollegiate champion by winning the broad jump for Yale at 22 feet 10 inches. But Armstrong never ceased his efforts. A trip to Cambridge for the finals in the Intercollegiates showed him the styles used by the greatest collegiate jumpers, and after returning to New Haven he put his observations to such good effect that he cleared 22 feet 4 inches.
"What's the use of keeping up that old grind at the track," said the Codfish one night. "Why don't you go over to the Freshman baseball squad? You may get a chance there yet."
"I'm after something," returned Frank, "and it's coming so fast that I don't want to let go."
"And that something?"
"Don't laugh, it's Hotchkiss. He's been so blamed cocky that I'd give my shoes to lick his mark in the Intercollegiates just for personal satisfaction. I'm too late to do anything with the baseball squad now anyway."
"Noble ambition," said the Codfish, "but what's the use? There's nothing more for the track men this spring."
"Just the same I'm going to keep at it."
"Go ahead then, jump your legs off, while Turner and I win the glory."
Turner had by steady improvement worked himself into the position of first catcher on the Freshman team. The Codfish, leaving temporarily his ambition to break into the exclusive ranks of the Mandolin Club, had won the position of official scorer of the Freshman, a place which he filled with great credit.
"Another sit-down job," said Turner laughing. "Trust the Codfish to get something easy."
"Why not? I don't love violent exercise. If I hanker for the cool shade of the scorer's bench and can record the glorious deeds of our young catcher and ease up on him when he makes flub-dubs, who is to say me nay? But I'm a believer in hard work, just the same——"
"For the other fellow," broke in Frank.
"Sure, that's what gives Yale her prestige, doesn't it? If it becomes necessary for me to don the baseball suit to uphold the athletics of Yale, then I'll do it. Till then, with all you good workers around, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't take the shade."
"Noble youth," said Frank. "We'll keep on in the sun and let you take the shade," and nothing either the Codfish or Turner could say changed Frank's determination to keep everlastingly at his jumping practice, uninteresting though it appeared to his roommates.
"Now I know why you stuck to the jumping," said the Codfish one morning as he scanned the first page of the News.
"Elucidate," said Frank.
"Here it is right in our lively little daily. Oxford and Cambridge-Yale-Harvard meet arranged. Teams about evenly matched. Sail for England July 2nd, and a whole string of likely candidates in which I see your name."
"O, but I'm a Freshman, and a Freshman can't compete in 'Varsity matches," said Frank, but his heart gave a bound just the same.
"You won't be a Freshman after June 17th, you bonehead," returned the Codfish joyfully, "provided you don't flunk your examinations. You'll be a jolly Sophomore with all the blackness of Freshman year behind you."
"But there's Hotchkiss. He's better than I am, and a Junior."
"He'll be a Senior, don't you savez, but that will make mighty little difference if you can outjump him. They will take only the best, or I'm a galoot."
"You generally are, Codfish, but I'll work my head off to make that team."
"You've nearly worked it off already, and you've got to make that team. Pictures in the papers, details of your early life, moving stories about your many virtues, weeping relatives at the dock as the ship sails out of the bay and all that sort of thing. I can see it all now."
Frank laughed at his enthusiastic friend. But his pulse quickened at the thought of the possibility of making the team which should represent America in this international contest. Turner, too, was wild with delight at the turn affairs had taken. "Now I wish I had been a jumper. We'll read the cable dispatches every day. You're bound to make it."
"Don't count your chickens," said Frank, "till they are safely hatched. You forget that Hotchkiss is doing nearly 23 feet."
Two days later a call in the News brought all the first string track men together in the trophy room of the Gymnasium, and Frank Armstrong was among them. Captain Harrington read the challenge from the English Universities, and told them what was expected of them.
"This is going to be a free field, and everyone will have his chance. The team will be the best that Harvard and Yale can get together. Practice will be held at the Field every day as usual, and the trials will be at Cambridge a week before we sail. Only first place counts in this meet with the Englishmen so it will not be necessary to take any but the best men in each event. I want you to give the best in you. We must give a good account of ourselves here at Yale."
The captain got a rousing cheer at the end of his speech which was a long one for him, and the athletes clattered down the wide, marble steps in excited discussion of the coming event and Yale's possibilities.
"Armstrong," said the trainer next day at the field, "you have a chance to make this team. I want you to go to it as hard as you know how."
"I've been doing that for the last month."
"Well, you've improved a lot in that time. You've got to beat Hotchkiss to win out. It's up to you."
During the remainder of the college year Frank put every spare minute in the preparation for the final test for the team. Even in the trying time of examinations he managed to squeeze out half hours at the Field, and when it was not possible to get out there, he studied the theory of broad-jumping, searched the library for information on the subject and found little enough. At Commencement a famous jumper of former years took him in hand and gave him some advice which helped him greatly. Steadily, if slowly, he continued to improve his marks, until one hot morning he raced down the runway and cleared 22 feet 10 inches, much to the discomfort of Hotchkiss who, in spite of his experience, did not relish the fact that the Freshman was drawing nearer and nearer to equality with him.
"Twenty-two feet ten inches," announced Black. "Hotchkiss, you've got to look out for your laurels. This Freshman will beat you out if you don't improve your jump."
Hotchkiss scowled and tried harder than ever, but he seemed to have reached his limit, and was unable to surpass his distance in the Intercollegiates.
That night Frank wrote to his mother: "Mother, I have a chance, only a chance, mind you, to make the team that is going to England to represent Yale and Harvard. If I win a place are you and dad willing to let me go?"
And the answer came back on the next mail: "Yes."
"That settles it," cried Frank, flourishing the letter above his head as he capered about the room. "I'll win out or die trying."
The Codfish spoke up: "Perhaps you don't know that I'm going too."
"For what?" inquired Frank.
"To see that you keep in strict training and out of mischief."
"You actually mean you would go across if I should make the team?"
"Bettcher life," came the quick answer. "I've got to do something this summer, and I can't imagine anything better than to see the Johnny Bulls properly tanned."
"Jimmy, how about you?" inquired Frank.
"I'm not a bloated bondholder like the Codfish. It's work for mine this summer. But I'll read all the cablegrams and pray for you!"