“Oh, look here, coach,” he said eagerly, “there’s nothing the matter with me at all. Really there isn’t. I feel as fit as a fiddle. That swim and rub down I had just about set me up. And I got a good nap over in the gym., too. I’m just crazy to play.”
The coach was silent for a moment while he studied the boy. Then he smiled and said:
“All right. I’ll let you go in. But promise me when you feel that the exertion is too much for you you will let me know. I don’t want to be responsible for having you break down when you get back to school and cause you to have a session in the infirmary, you know.”
“Oh, don’t fear, coach. I’m all right. Just let me go in.”
The coach gave Jeff his way, but the new third baseman soon realized that Mr. Rice knew a lot more about the physical capabilities of boys than he did. He was far from being at the top of his game and his playing was decidedly ragged. But at that he seemed to have himself better in hand than most of the other players, for they were all just as ragged as he was and some of them a great deal more so. About the only one who seemed to have his feet on the ground at all was sturdy little Tad Sloan, the catcher and captain. He played a good, heady baseball game, and he tried valiantly to instill his own confidence into the rest, but with little success.
The game opened up a veritable “swat fest,” to quote the baseball writers. The Custer School pitcher, Ray Strong, was in bad shape during the first three innings and the visitors found him for several bunches of clean hits ranging from sizzling singles, to a long three-base drive by Dutch Hecht that brought in two runs.
But big George Dixon seemed to be no better off than the Custer School man, for he was “as wild as a tom cat,” as Coach Rice expressed it. He passed the first and second man up and served a wide out to the next Custer batter, who promptly landed on it for a smash into right field that brought both runners home and put him in a position to score on the next hit, which was not long in coming. Indeed, the Custer School players buried Dixon under an avalanche of hits in the first and second innings and he finally appealed to Coach Rice to take him out until he could steady down. Honey Wiggins went in after that and seemed to be just the man to step into the breach, for he steadied down and actually struck out two of the opposing players for the first two strike outs of the game.
They took out Ray Long, too, in the third and put in a young husky with terrific speed and fine control, but very little versatility in pitching anything but straight balls. He was good, however, and he seemed to be working on something more than pure nerve which had been Long’s case for the first three innings.
Each side had scored heavily in the opening innings, with the advantage going to the Custer School team. The tally stood 8 to 6 at the beginning of the fourth inning. But both teams showed signs of steadying down, however, and with the advent of new pitchers the hitting suddenly let down. Indeed, Honey Wiggins held the Custer team to two hits in the succeeding three innings and neither of them amounted to more than getting a man on base.
The new Custer pitcher also kept the hits scattered until the beginning of the seventh, when big Lafe Gammage, the second man up, slammed a likely bingle between short and third, and Mickey Daily beat out a pretty bunt and advanced Lafe to second. There were two on and one out. Buck Hart was up next and Buck was due for a hit.