“What can we do?” asked another player.
“We’ll have to put in anybody we can and let those duffers hit it out, that’s all.”
The next batter lifted an infield fly to third and was out. The time had come for the visiting team to take the field. Trueman asked the umpire to call time until he could decide who should go in to pitch.
Two pitchers were on the bench, but one of them was sick and the other had an arm that would not enable him to throw the ball up to the plate. It did seem that it was “all off.”
“Where’s that jay who threw some for the batters to hit before the game?” asked somebody. “You might try him.”
“Oh, he’d be a mark in a game!” declared a player. “He’s the greenest thing that ever happened.”
“But he did have speed.”
“And some curves.”
“You must have somebody, Trueman.”
The captain of the visiting team looked round in despair. The first person he saw, sitting not far away on the bleachers, was a raw-looking countryman in a suit of clothes that were about twenty years out of date. The countryman wore a narrow-brimmed, low-crowned, rusty derby hat, a spike-tailed coat of grandfather’s days, high-water trousers, which bagged at the knees and were a mile too loose, a pair of long-legged boots with dried mud on them, and a standing collar that was not much more than half an inch high. His bright red necktie was tied in a huge bow, and his white shirt was rather soiled. From beneath the derby hat flowed a mass of carroty hair that was straight and coarse. His face did not look very clean, and he wore a grin that was almost idiotic.