After that, for several innings, Wayne forgot how hot he was. East, the Toonalta left fielder, also fell victim to Chase’s slants, but Burns, second baseman, slammed a hard one at Despaigne and that youth made his first error. Although he recovered his fumble like lightning, the runner, a fast chap on the dirt, was safe by the time the ball was in Jim Wheelock’s hands. A single past White sent the runner to second and placed the rival shortstop on first, but the trouble ended a few minutes later when Pete Chase scored his third strike-out in one inning.
Joe Taylor had rearranged his line-up for today’s battle. Hal Collins, left fielder, led off and was followed by Wheelock, first baseman, Taylor, right fielder, Colton, centre fielder, White, third baseman, Hoffman, catcher, Sloan, second baseman, Despaigne, shortstop, and Chase, pitcher.
The Toonalta pitcher, Ellis by name, was heralded as a wonder, and before the game started the team was undeniably in awe of him. But by the time the first inning was at an end the awe had disappeared. Nor did it return, for only one strike-out did Ellis have to his credit when the contest was over, and that the game went as it did was due rather to the Toonalta fielding than to the twirler’s science. It was a hitting game from first to last, a game in which slip-ups in fielding by either side would have spelled disaster at any moment. As for strike-outs, after the first inning Chase hung up but two more scalps, giving him, however, a creditable total of five for the game.
It was Hal Collins who took the first jab at Ellis’ reputation as a pitcher. Hal failed to hit safely, but his fly to deep centre on the second ball pitched might easily have gone for three bags, and the fielder’s catch, made on the run, brought a salvo of applause from friend and foe alike. Jim Wheelock, with the score two-and-two, sent a sharp single down the first base line. Joe Taylor tried hard to land safely but only succeeded in dropping an easy one into shortstop’s glove and Colton brought the inning to an end by banging a low fly to right fielder. Jim never got beyond first, but as every man up had connected in some fashion with Ellis’ delivery the home team’s respect for his skill fell to zero.
In Toonalta’s second things began to happen at once. The brown-stockinged first baseman hit between Wayne and Jim Wheelock for a base and only a fine stop and throw by Joe Taylor kept him from taking second. The next man hit to Wayne, and Wayne fielded to Despaigne, cutting off the first runner by a yard. There was, though, no chance for a double. With one on, Browne, Toonalta’s right fielder, let Chase work two strikes across before he found anything to his liking. Perhaps Chase held him too lightly. At all events the fourth offering was a perfectly straight, fast ball and the batsman leaned against it hard, so hard that the sphere cleared Chase’s head at a speed roughly estimated at a mile a minute, climbed up out of Wayne’s reach, and kept right on going. And when it finally did come to earth no one saw it, for it landed somewhere beyond the fence at the far end of the field! The handful of Toonalta “rooters” stood up and shouted themselves hoarse and blared through red, white, and blue megaphones and waved anything they could lay their hands on, while a deep and all-pervading silence rested over the Medfield forces. Two runs came across and things looked rather blue for the home team, or perhaps I should say brown, since brown was the Toonalta colour.
The discredited Ellis fouled out to Gas Hoffman and the head of the visitors’ list was thrown out, Despaigne to Wheelock, and the trouble was over for the moment. For Chenango, Billy White led off with a safety to left and went to second a minute later when first baseman let Ellis’ throw go past him. Hoffman hit to Ellis, the pitcher spearing the ball with his gloved hand and holding White at second. Wayne produced the third safety of the game by trickling a slow one down the first base line, sending White to third and putting himself on first. Despaigne hit to second baseman and the latter hurled to the plate, getting Billy White. Wayne took second and Despaigne was safe at first. Chase worried Ellis for a pass and the bases were full. Medfield howled gleefully as Hal Collins stepped to the plate, for a hit would tie up the game. But there were two down and Ellis tightened up, and, with two balls and one strike on him, Collins bit at a bad one and it came down into third baseman’s waiting hands just over the foul line.
But that inning encouraged the Chenangos, for, as Joe Taylor said confidently, if they kept on hitting Ellis as they had been hitting him something was sure to break lose sooner or later. June, presiding at the bats and lording it a bit in his fine uniform, predicted ruin and desolation for the enemy in the fifth inning. “Ain’ nothin’ goin’ to happen till then,” he declared, looking wise and rolling his eyes, “but when it do happen it’s goin’ to happen, yes, sir! You min’ my words, gen’lemen!” June wasn’t far wrong, either, as things turned out, for nothing did happen until the fifth and even if that inning didn’t prove quite as disastrous to the enemy as he had predicted, why, perhaps, that wasn’t his fault.
Four men faced Chase in the third, the first getting a scratch hit, the second sacrificing him to the next bag and the other two proving easy outs. In the home team’s half, Jim Wheelock flied out to centre fielder, Joe Taylor to first baseman—it was a hot liner, but the chap held onto it—and Colton went out third to first. In the fourth, Toonalta started out with a walk, followed with a sacrifice hit, a fly to Collins in left field, another pass and still another one—three for the inning. Then Jordan was warming up over behind third and the infield was begging Chase to take his time and stop fooling, and, with bases filled, half a hundred seemingly insane spectators yelling like wild Indians, Gas Hoffman looking pretty set about the mouth and Pete Chase plainly slipping, hit a long fly to Collins and so ended as nerve-racking a quarter of an hour as the contest provided! When that ball settled into Hal Collins’ hands the shout that went up must certainly have been heard at the corner of Main and Whitney Streets, which is equivalent to saying a mile and a half away! Anyone who has played through that sort of a half-inning knows the vast and blessed relief that comes when the end arrives and the men on bases turn, grumbling, away and the team trots triumphantly in. They pounded each other’s backs and slapped Chase on the shoulder and shook hands with him quite as though he had not himself caused all the anxiety and suspense. June’s face was one big, white-toothed grin!
“That’s their last chance!” proclaimed Captain Taylor. “They’ll never get another one like it. Now, then, fellows, let’s go in and cop this game right now!”