On Wednesday the nine played the Harvard Second. Phil sat on the bench as usual, waiting for the chance that never came, amusing himself by guessing from the attitude of the players at the bat where their hits would be, and planning the position he should take in left-field, if he were playing, for the various men. Ordinarily, when a visiting nine had already played Hillbury, he contrived to strike up a conversation with the pitcher or some of the fielders, and learn if possible where and how the various Hillbury batters had hit. To-day the players from the University had seemed so imposing—one of them was a famous Varsity half-back—that the boy had not yet mustered courage to accost them.
By this process of questioning visiting teams, Phil had gathered a very considerable fund of information about the peculiarities of the individuals who made up the Hillbury team. The pitchers contributed most to this fund, for they were often able to recall clearly just what kind of balls had deceived the respective Hillbury batsmen, and what had proved unsuccessful. One was easily caught by a sharp drop, another could not hit a fast straight ball kept high, still another was regularly fooled by a change of pace. All these discoveries, with other facts culled from newspaper accounts, went down in the baseball note-book which Phil had started early in the winter, but no one except Dick had yet seen. He meant in time to submit the results to Sands and Tompkins; at present he was still collecting facts.
The game was already past the fourth inning, without a run scored on either side. The visitors had twice got a man as far as second base, once on a fumble by Hayes, the short-stop, and a hit to centre-field; once on a long drive to left-field close to the line, which Taylor ran for but did not reach. Tompkins was getting acquainted with the batters. He had his own way of testing a new man. First he tried to drive him away from the plate by a ball close in. If the batsman pulled away, he was sure he was pitching to a timid man, and caught him on an assortment of swift curves; if, on the other hand, the batsman declined to pull away, Tompkins knew that he had to do with a cool, determined hitter who would probably be able to detect the curve on the break, and meet it squarely. To such dangerous men he gave his best drops and worked high and low straight balls with a change of pace. So far his method had been successful with the visitors.
Taylor came in at the beginning of the fifth with a pale face. “I’m afraid I can’t finish out, Archie,” he said to Sands. “I feel so blamed sick I can hardly stand.”
“What’s the matter?” demanded Sands, with little show of sympathy.
“My stomach’s out of order, I think,” groaned Taylor. “I haven’t been well all day.”
“What have you been putting into it?”
“Nothing,—that is, nothing unusual.”
Sands peered at him for an instant questioningly. “Well, then, go home and lie down. Here, Poole, take Taylor’s place. You’re up next.”