CHAPTER XXIX
TAKING A BRACE
“Sickening!” growled Bert Elgin sitting on the bench. “But what can you expect with a dub like Locke on the slab?”
Andy Whalen, a little sore at having been left out of the game, nodded absently. Next instant, however, he turned his eyes from the diamond for a second to glance at his companion.
“It isn’t altogether his fault, though,” he said. “It’s no cinch to start in pitching to a perfectly strange lot of batters, and Schaeffer shouldn’t have had that base.”
“Don’t you believe it,” snapped Elgin. “If we had a real pitcher—”
“A hit!” Whalen cried. “No, it isn’t, either. It’s going straight at Burley.”
Springing to his feet, he watched the ball soaring out into left field; saw Tom Burley running back to get under it; held his breath as the white sphere dropped swiftly, apparently straight into the fielder’s hands; and then sank back on the bench with a groan as the fellow muffed miserably.
“Butterfingers!” he said bitterly. “Why didn’t you hold it, you chunk of solid ivory!”