Joe grinned. “Oh, well, I suppose he didn’t mean to do it,” he answered. “I must drop around this evening and see how he is. All right, fellows! Let’s get at it!”
So that is how Wayne became a second instead of a third baseman. After two or three days in the position he decided, and all who watched him in action decided, that second was where he belonged. He took throws from the plate nicely and developed an almost uncanny ability to outguess the base-runner, and the way he blocked him off was good to see. He had to guard against over-throwing to first for a while, for the distance was strange, but it didn’t take him long to learn to snap instead of speeding them to Wheelock. The best thing of all, however, was the way in which he and Vic Despaigne fitted into each other. As Gas Hoffman had predicted, they worked together nicely and double plays began to be so frequent as to scarcely merit remark. At third, White got along very well, although he was scarcely as dependable as Wayne had been. He got better as the season progressed, however, and by the first of July the Chenango infield was about as good as they make them for amateur teams.
Up to that time the club had played seven games, of which it had won three, lost three, and tied one. The Fourth of July contest was with the Toonalta A. A., and, since Toonalta had beaten Joe’s charges the year before and the year before that, Chenango was very anxious to score a victory. The game was to be played at Medfield, a fact calculated to favour the home team, and Joe and most of the others were quite hopeful. But Joe didn’t allow that to keep him from putting the nine through some very strenuous practice during the week preceding the contest.
[CHAPTER XII]
MEDFIELD CELEBRATES
Medfield began her celebration of the Fourth about twenty-four hours ahead of time and gradually worked up to a top-notch of noise, eloquence, and patriotism at approximately one o’clock Tuesday afternoon, at which hour the observances in City Park were at their height. Everyone had turned out, in spite of the almost unbearable heat, and every club or association, from the Grand Army Post to the Medfield Women’s Civic Association, had marched in the procession that, headed by a platoon of police and a very stout Grand Marshal seated precariously on one of Callahan’s livery horses, had, in the words of the next day’s Morning Chronicle, “taken just forty-eight minutes to pass a given point.” The Chronicle neglected, however, to mention the fact that the given point to which it referred was the Grand Street crossing where the procession had been held up quite ten minutes by an inconsiderate freight train! Still, it was a fine parade, any way you looked at it. The Fire Department made a glorious showing, the Sons of Veterans marched well in spite of the small boys who got under their feet, the High School Cadets displayed quite a martial appearance, and the various floats, from that of the Women’s Civic Association, which depicted a somewhat wabbly, Grecian-robed America accepting a liberty cap from General Washington, down to the clattering, tinkling wagon hung with tin pans and dippers and plates and dustpans that represented the Medfield Stamping Works, all added to the brilliance of the occasion!
You may be certain that neither Wayne nor June missed that parade. On the contrary, they viewed it four separate and distinct times, dodging through side streets as soon as the tail end had passed and reaching a new point of vantage before the head of it appeared. June was frankly disappointed in that the Grand Marshal managed somehow to remain in the saddle until the very end and then left it of his own free will and, it is suspected, very thankfully. June remained hopeful to the last, but was doomed to disappointment. He had a wearied, sleepy appearance today, had June, explained by the fact that he had stayed up all last night with some of his cronies, doing his best to make the occasion memorable in the annals of Medfield, assisting at the lighting and nourishing of the bonfire on Tannery Hill, observing the firing of the cannon in the park at dawn, and finally returning to “Carhurst” at breakfast time with the look of one completely surfeited with pleasure. Wayne had been rather cross at first, but his anger had subsided at sight of June’s left hand. June, it seemed, had lighted a Roman candle and, unwisely obeying the instructions of an acquaintance, had held it by the business end. He hadn’t held it that way long, but long enough to burn the palm of his hand so badly that he had to wear a bandage for nearly a week.
The two boys listened to the speeches and singing at the park, ate a hurried and fragmentary dinner at a downtown lunch-room, and then hied themselves to the Y. M. C. A. field. The game with Toonalta was to begin at half-past two, but owing to the fact that Joe Taylor and Jim Wheelock and one or two others had spent the noontime swaying about on top of the Association float and that it took them some time to change from Historical Personages to baseball players, it was nearly three when, before an audience that crowded the stand and flowed over on both sides of the field, Pete Chase wound up and sent the first delivery speeding across the plate for a strike.
It was a sizzling hot afternoon, with scarcely a breath of air blowing across the diamond. The glare on the gray-brown dirt of the base path hurt the eyes, and Wayne, clad in almost immaculate, new baseball togs, felt the perspiration trickling down his back and from under the edge of his cap. Between him and the pitcher’s box heat waves danced and shimmered. His throwing hand was moist and he wiped it on a trouser leg. The Chenango infield was talking hearteningly to Chase and each other, Jim Wheelock’s drawl mingling with Vic Despaigne’s sharp staccato. There were two umpires that day and Wayne was wondering how the one on the bases stood the heat in his blue flannel attire, with his coat buttoned tightly from chin to waist. Chase wasted one and then put a second strike across. Medfield’s adherents cheered and the chatter in the field increased again. Then there was a crack and Chase put up a lazy gloved hand, turned and tossed the ball to Jim. One out!