Yale was making a last desperate struggle for a score in the sixth inning. With one man out and a man on first, a weak batter came up. If the batter tried to get a hit, it looked like a great opportunity for a double play by Harvard.
Old Put, who was in uniform, ran down to first, and sent in the coacher, whose place he took on the line. Then he signaled the batter to take one, his signal being obeyed, and it proved to be a ball.
Put was a great coacher, and now he opened up in a lively way, with Robinson rattling away over by third. Put was not talking simply to rattle the pitcher; he was giving signals at the same time, and he signed for the man on first to go down on the next pitch, at the same time giving the batter the tip to make a fake swing at the ball to bother the catcher.
This programme was carried out, and it worked, for the runner got second on a slide and a close decision.
Then the Yale rooters opened their throats, and blue banners fluttered in a bunch over on the bleachers where the New Haven gang was packed together.
"Yell, you suckers, yell!" cried Dickson, Harvard's first baseman. "It's the only chance you'll get."
His words were drowned in the tumult and noise.
Up in the grand stand there was a waving of blue flags and white handkerchiefs, telling that there were not a few of the fair spectators who sympathized with the boys from New Haven.
Then the man at the bat reached first on a scratch hit and a fumble, and there seemed to be a small rift in the clouds which had lowered over the heads of the Yale freshmen so long.
But the next man up promptly fouled out, and the clouds seemed to close in again as dark as ever.