With Mask and Mitt

by Albertus T. Dudley

Carle and Borland were put at the head of the battery combinations, apparently with as little hesitancy as if they had been veterans carried over from a triumphant season. The first choice of hours was theirs, their opinions were listened to with respect; their position as fixtures seemed almost as well recognized as that of Poole himself. In spite of all self-preparation, Rob was almost startled to find what a gap existed between himself and his old battery mate; and as he remembered how often in past games when bases were full and things were going wrong with the pitching, he had guided the bewildered Carle out of his difficulties, he could not help a feeling of pique, nor avoid wondering whether Borland would succeed as well. After Carle, O'Connell, one of the class pitchers of the year before, held the next position of favor, and Poole quietly put down the combination, Owen and O'Connell, for cage hours together. There were also Patterson, a new man about whom nothing was known, and Peters, right fielder on the nine the year before, who was learning to pitch. For these, also, practice catchers were arranged.

From the outset, Owen found his practice with O'Connell unpleasant. It could not have been from any prejudice against the pitcher, for Rob, who was eager for any opportunity which seemed to offer him a "show," was at first greatly pleased at the prospect of being mated with the man who, before the advent of Carle, had been regarded as the most promising of the school pitchers. Whatever secret hopes he may have cherished of building up a rival battery were in a fortnight wholly dispelled. O'Connell couldn't pitch, and wouldn't learn. He couldn't pitch because his whole idea seemed to be to throw a ball with as big a curve as possible, without much care as to where it was going, or how near the plate it was destined to come; the only ball which he could surely put over was a straight waist ball which any child could hit. He wouldn't learn, because he thought it a pitcher's business to pitch, and a catcher's not to give instruction but to catch. To Rob's suggestions that any kind of a waist-high ball was dangerous, that the best pitcher he ever saw did not cover a width of more than three feet in a whole game, keeping the ball constantly at the plate—O'Connell paid not the slightest attention. He was quite unwilling to suppose that a man who had enjoyed the privilege of Seaton coaching for a year could learn anything from a country boy from western Pennsylvania. The result was that Rob soon ceased to try to help the pitcher, and contented himself with taking the balls within reach in silence and letting the rest strike the net. The loungers about the cage could not have been impressed with the skill of the catching.

One day toward the end of the discouraging fortnight, when Rob was feeling particularly blue over the situation and wondering whether it would not be better after all to let the catching go altogether and take his chances on his hitting for a fielding position, he fell in with Patterson on the way down street, and asked him casually how he was getting on with pitching.

"Not very well," answered Patterson, ruefully. "I can't seem to learn anything."

"Who catches you?" asked Rob.

"Foxcroft," replied Patterson, gloomily. "He's a good backstop, I suppose, but he never tells me anything, and you can't learn by yourself. Poole ought to fix it so that we can get some instruction, I think."

Rob did not answer. He was marvelling at the contrariness of circumstances. Here was O'Connell who might have instruction but wouldn't take it, and Patterson who wanted it but couldn't get it!

"A man who ought to know told me once that I had the makings of a pitcher in me,—the arm swing, snappy wrist, and all that, you know,—but I've had mighty little chance for coaching and no such experience as these fellows here get, so I don't know whether he was fooling me or not. I don't seem to be getting ahead at all now."

"Oh, you mustn't be discouraged," said Rob, unfairly assuming in his own discouragement the right to blame the other's faint-heartedness. "It takes time to learn to pitch."