“O you Joe Casey!” bellowed the audience. “Hit it out, Joe!” “Remember yesterday, Joe!”
The young pitcher, who Wayne gathered had been ingloriously hammered the preceding afternoon, didn’t look like a likely candidate to pull the game out of the fire, for he presented a very awkward appearance at the plate. But he didn’t have much chance to show his prowess for Henderson pitched two balls before he got a strike over and then followed with two more, forcing in the tying run and exiling himself to the showers. The audience shouted joy and relief and settled down to their seats again. But they still sat on the edges, for the game was still to win. Linton tried hard to deliver but only hit across the infield to shortstop and LaCroix was an easy out at the plate. The new pitcher for Doncaster was slow and heady and he was cutting the corners very nicely, it seemed, for he wafted two strikes over on Cotton before the Badgers’ box artist knew what was happening, and Harrisville saw her hopes descending. Still, in the end Cotton almost came through. With the score two-and-two, he met a straight one and lifted it gloriously against the sky for what looked like a circuit hit. Harrisville arose as one man and shouted hoarsely and triumphantly, for that ball looked exactly as though it meant to ride right on over the left field fence. The fielder hiked back on twinkling feet, looked over his shoulder, raced on again, turned, stepped back until his shadow loomed large against the boards behind him, and put up his hands. And that deceitful ball just came right down into them as though pulled there by an invisible string!
Gloom and disgust possessed the stands!
The sun was gone behind the hills in the west when the eleventh session opened and the heat of the afternoon was giving place to the coolness of evening. Coats which had laid across knees for ten long innings were donned again. Here and there a spectator arose, unwillingly, and, with long backward looks, took himself homeward. Cotton was pitching fine ball now and Doncaster had never a look-in during her half of the eleventh. But neither had Harrisville in her portion. If Cotton was going well, so was the rival twirler, and the nearest thing to a hit that either team evolved was a palpable scratch that placed Cross on first, from which sack he failed to move. In the twelfth the Billies caused consternation by working Cotton for a pass and advancing a man to third on a sacrifice and an error by LaCroix, playing second. But two strike-outs followed and averted calamity.
Manager Milburn’s line-up was a rather patched affair by now, for he had staked all on that tenth inning crisis. Fawcett started off by flying out to left. O’Neill hit for one. LaCroix fouled out to catcher. O’Neill stole on the second pitch to Linton and was safe. Linton fouled twice behind third base, each time barely escaping being caught out, and then, with two strikes and two balls against him, waited and walked to base. With two on and Cotton at bat anything might happen—or nothing. For a while it looked like nothing, for Cotton, in spite of his eagerness to hit and the wild and weird manner in which he swung his bat around his head, for all the world like a joyous lad twirling a shillalah at Donnybrook Fair and daring an adversary to step up and have his head broken, the Billies’ pitcher managed to sneak them across in unexpected places until the score was two-and-two. Cotton was losing his temper now, and Wayne could hear Steve Milburn barking at him from the bench. A third ball went past. The bleachers stormed and railed at the Doncaster pitcher, Cotton squeezed his bat harder than ever and did a little dance in the box. The Billies’ twirler wound up, shot his arm forward and the ball sped to the plate. Perhaps Cotton mistook the ball for the pitcher’s head. At all events, he tried hard to break his bat on it and came near to doing it. Off whizzed the ball and off sped Cotton. But the long fly, while it started fair, soon broke to the left, and Cotton, pounding the turf between first and second with head down and legs twinkling, was stopped in his mad career and headed back to the plate. The audience groaned its disappointment and sat down again. Then an unlooked-for event occurred. Wayne was apprised of it first when a wild burst of delight broke from his neighbours in the bleachers. At the plate Cotton was walking sadly toward the bench, the umpire, mask off, was shouting something that Wayne couldn’t hear for the noise about him and a new figure strode to the batter’s box.
“Who is it?” asked Wayne to the bleachers at large.
“Steve himself!” was the answer. “Bust it, Steve! Knock the hide off it! Wow!”
And sure enough it was Manager Milburn who faced the Doncaster pitcher now and who tapped a long black bat gently on the rubber, leaned it against his leg, moistened his hands and rubbed them together, took up the bat again and eyed the moundsman warily. In the outfield the players were stepping back and still back. The Harrisville rooters shouted and screeched, red of face, entreating of voice.
One ball, far wide of the plate, that Steve Milburn only looked at as it sped by. A strike that caused him to turn and observe the umpire silently and derisively. Another ball, high and on the inside, that sent Steve’s head and shoulders jerking back from its path. The pandemonium increased. Another offering that would have cut the outer corner of the plate knee-high had not Manager Milburn’s bat been ready for it. A fine, heartening crack of wood and leather, a gray streak cutting the shadows of the first base stands, cries, pounding feet, dust, confusion and—victory! The ball passed second baseman a yard from his outstretched fingers and went to right fielder on its first long bound. But right fielder never threw it. Instead, he merely trotted benchward. For O’Neill was throwing himself across the plate by that time and Milburn was on first and the game was over! And Harrisville had avenged yesterday’s defeat to the tune of four to three!