It was the boys' world, not only untouched by grown-ups but blessedly even unsuspected by parents. Since it was theirs, since they created it anew every day, it exactly fitted their needs, and it grew and changed with their inner growth as their school never did. They were far from any self-conscious notion that they created it. Rather they seemed to themselves to accept it from the outside, as they accepted the weather. What had they to do with the succession of the seasons, either of games or temperature? In the nature of things you could no more play marbles in the autumn than pick wild strawberries in December.
In the autumn, they played football, a sort of association-football with no limit to the number on each side, played with a heavy black rubber ball, blown up with a brass tube. The tube always got lost, and the valve always leaked. After a few games it became deflated, with the resiliency of a soggy sponge. But it was kicked to and fro just the same.
When snow came, there was snow-balling, with forts of a rich, chocolate color, from the street-dirt mixed with the snow. About these raged feudal chivalry, loyalty and pride of place, one street against another. Sometimes all the district united against invading Huns from Hoboken or Jersey City Heights. Only a few boys skated, and Neale was not one of them, but everybody made slides in the slush.
With spring came roller-skates, marbles (utilizing the cracks between sidewalk slabs), tops, kites, cat (a game for two), and, ah! baseball in the vacant lots!
Neale was neither a star nor a dub at any game, but craving proficiency more than anything else in the world, he learned to do pretty well at all of them. At baseball, the major sport of the year, he toiled incessantly, and when he was ten years old, he was pretty sure of his job at second base on the Hancock Avenue Orioles. On ground balls he was erratic, but so was everybody on those rough, vacant-lot diamonds, where the ball ricocheted zig-zag from one stone to another. Long practice catching fungoes gave him a death-like certainty on pop flies. His "wing was poor," as he expressed it; strong enough in the arm, he had never mastered the wrist snap that gives velocity. As a batsman he was temperamental; one day he would feel right, and hit everything, another day his batting eye would inexplicably be gone, and he would fan at the widest dew-drops.
One Saturday afternoon they were playing the Crescent Juniors, a glorious swat-fest of a game in which Neale had run wild all the afternoon. It was in the ninth, the score was 17 to 15, with the Crescents ahead. One was down, Neale at the bat, Marty Ryan, the captain, was dancing on the base line, ready to dart in from third, Franz Uhler was taking a dangerous lead off second. Neale rapped his bat professionally on the plate and glared at the pitcher.
"Hit it out, Crit, old man!" yelled Fatty Schwartz, with a perfectly unnecessary steam-calliope volume of tone, "Hit it out! Save me a lick!"
"Much good you'd do with a lick," thought Neale to himself. "You couldn't hit a basket-ball with a telegraph pole." Yes, it was up to him, to him alone. It was like a scene from one of his favorite stories about himself, actually happening; and it went on actually happening. A wide one, another wide. They didn't call balls in Neale's league. He rapped the plate, "Aw! put it over if you know how!" he taunted. A foul tip caught, another wide one haughtily ignored, a strike. The catcher put on his mask and moved up close behind the bat. Neale felt himself nerved to great things. He glued his eyes to the pitcher. By the motion it should be a slow out. It wasn't breaking. Neale stabbed at it, sliced it and landed a Texas leaguer back of short.
He didn't see what happened. He ran. He flew. As he rounded second he caught a glimpse of the left fielder and short-stop falling over their feet, both trying to pick up the ball. As he turned the corner at third he saw the pitcher starting to run in to cover the plate and guessing that the catcher was chasing a wild throw, Neale put his head down and sprinted for dear life. Fifteen feet from the plate he dove, and shot over in a cloud of dust.
Neale, the ball, and the pitcher all arrived there at the same moment, but a partial umpire called it "safe." Don Roberts fouled to the catcher, Fatty Schwartz fanned. But the game was won.