Then, seemingly deaf to the continued howling of the crowd, he turned and walked back, apparently disregarding the taunting base runners, who were dancing off the sacks to lure a throw.
Larry Stark, doubtless wondering that Hutchinson had not signaled for a change, stood listless, twelve feet off second; but, without betraying the fact, Locke observed that Jim Sockamore, the Indian center fielder, apparently hoping to work an old trick in the midst of the excitement, was walking swiftly, but unobtrusively, in toward the sack. Indeed, Sockamore was not twenty feet from the bag when the pitcher faced Grady at the plate.
Only for an instant were Locke’s eyes turned toward the batsman; like a flash, he whirled again to face second, and the ball shot from his fingers as he turned.
He had not received a signal to throw, but he did so on the chance that the foxy Indian player would sneak all the way to the hassock, if for no other purpose than to show up what might have been pulled off with a live pitcher on the slab.
Sockamore was within five feet of the cushion when Locke turned, and, seeing the ball was coming, he leaped forward. Harney, not a little surprised, lunged back. Like a bullet the scarcely soiled ball sped straight into the eager hands of the young redskin, who met Harney and jabbed it on to him viciously as the Bancroft captain weakly sought to slip under.
The howling of the angry and dissatisfied crowd was instantly cut short. The sudden silence was ruptured by a single hoarse word shot from the lips of the umpire, who had been so surprised that for a moment he had faltered in giving the decision:
“Out!”
The spectators gasped; Harney choked and rumbled weakly. Sockamore grinned into the face of the tricked and chagrined man. At the bench, Henry Cope brought his hand down with a resounding slap upon his thigh, crying jubilantly:
“There! He got him!”
After a few moments of dazed silence, some scattered persons ventured to applaud and cheer faintly, while, apparently struck by the seeming incongruity of the unexpected performance, many others laughed.