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.”