Oh, it was a great and thrilling moment! Proud? Why, Jimmy hardly deigned to breathe just plain ordinary every-day air! It was not good enough for him!
The Yale men were wild with delight, and the crowd was thrilled with the intensity of it all.
Roland Ditson sneered.
“He’s arrived too late,” Ditson declared. “The game is lost already, and he cannot save it.”
“How does the score stand?” Frank asked, as he met Hodge, who grasped his hand.
“Five to one, in their favor,” was the answer, “and it is the last of the seventh, with not a man out and the bases full.”
“Give me the ball!”
Frank walked into the box, and, although their sympathies were with Virginia, the crowd cheered him. He wore no ball-suit, but he had simply flung aside his coat and prepared to pitch that inning just as he was. There was no time for him to “warm up.”
Every man was ready now. Yale was herself again. A little while before those men had believed it impossible to win that game. Now, with Frank in the box, they regarded it as won already.
Frank began to pitch. He knew the situation was desperate, and he did not dally. He used all his skill at the very outset. He dealt out the double-shoot in liberal portions, and the first man to face him had soon fanned the air to the limit and retired. The next one met the same fate. The third fared no better, and Virginia obtained no more scores that inning.