“No one else saw it,” growled the captain.
“That may be true, but it doesn’t change matters. He was out. Now if you want to play ball go on with the game. If you’d rather spend your time wrangling like a lot of hoodlums, then that is your privilege. Either go on with the game and tell your men to play ball as gentlemen ought to play it or give it up and quit.”
The angry captain glared at the umpire a moment, then turned sulkily to his companions and said: “Oh, well, come on, fellows! I suppose we’ll have to give in, but we’ve got to play the umpire as well as the Rodman nine.”
“I guess it isn’t the umpire, it’s the pitcher that bothers those fellows,” said Walter to the third-baseman as the Benson players sulkily walked to their positions on the field. “Dan is doing great work!”
His words were overheard by the Benson player who had been the cause of the interruption. Stopping abruptly, he glared at Walter a moment and then said: “I guess if the pitcher didn’t do any better than your short-stop does, it wouldn’t take long to wind up this game.”
“Don’t say anything, Walter,” said Dan as he came to the side of his friend and quietly took his arm. “When a fellow is in the game he wants to work the muscles in his arms and legs and back, but there are some other muscles he doesn’t want to let get into the game at all.”
“You mean the muscles of his tongue?”
“Yes.”
“I never dispute the umpire anyway,” said Walter, his face flushing slightly as he spoke.
“Don’t dispute the other nine. If there is any disputing to be done, let them do it all.”