[CHAPTER XXIV]
HANS’ SECOND TRIP TO NEW YORK
For the second time in the history of the contests between the two big schools each had won a game and it was necessary to play a third game to decide the championship. To provide for such cases they had a rule that where a third game was necessary it must be played on neutral ground, the location to be agreed upon by the captains. This was generally done by tossing a coin. The winner had the right to name the place.
This was a very important matter to decide in such a simple way, as the team securing the choice of location for this game also secured sixty per cent of the gate receipts after the expenses were paid, the money all going of course to the athletic fund. You would think that this arrangement and the attractive feature of the gate money would cause the boys to try to break even on the first two games every year, but the fact that this was only the second time in twenty years that it occurred goes to show how square the games were.
When they came to toss the coin this time Hughie called, “Heads,” and heads it was. He promptly said, “We will play it at the Polo Grounds in New York,” and Mr. Williams, the treasurer of the university, immediately arranged the matter by telegraph.
This suited both teams very well. They would break training immediately after the game and the long strain would be over, whichever team won the final game. The game would be played on Thursday, and they could take Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to have a look at the big city, and victors and losers would be royally entertained by the alumni of both colleges who lived there.
So they arranged for the reception of the team’s return to take place on the following Monday evening and everybody hoped and believed they would come back as champions again.
The Jefferson team meantime were hailed as friends and were given morning practice privileges on Lowell field and treated right royally so far as the training rules would permit. They got very well acquainted during the four or five days they spent together, and the old timers on both the teams regaled the youngsters with tales of the thrilling plays that had occurred between Jefferson and Lowell teams of the past. Most of them had been told many times at each school, but repeated under such conditions were doubly interesting.
During one of these fanning bees the talk as usual turned to famous fielding stunts, and many stories were again told of famous fielders and the baseball instinct. “I think the greatest fielder who seemed to have this instinct,” said La Joy, “was Hugh Duff. I have seen him a score of times out in our sun field catch the ball by instinct after losing it in the sun. Where another fielder would dodge and turn his back, Duff would just stick his hands up and catch it. He himself said often that he didn’t know how he did it.”
“Well, I think the fellow who had the highest development of playing ball by instinct,” said Pop Anderson, who was staying around with the boys, “was Walter Brodie. He seemed to know from the sound made by the bat, when the ball was hit, exactly where it was going. Many a time I have seen him start to run for a hard-hit fly ball without even looking, run fifty or seventy-five feet even, and then turn around for the first time in exactly the right spot to make the catch. He often used to give exhibitions before the games of turning his back to the ball almost as soon as it was hit, taking a run outward and making the catch with his hands behind his back and his back to the ball. It may have been practice, but how he knew where the ball would fall will always be a great mystery to all who saw him do it.”
“I’ll tell you, Ty,” said Captain Larke, “of a fielder whose record you can look up and when you get to be as good as he was, you will be pretty near the top. I mean Tom McCarthy. It was he who introduced the trapped ball on outfield flies. If you can learn to trap a ball as well as he did you will have learned something which almost every outfielder has tried but failed to do.