T. Haviland Hicks, Senior

by James Raymond Elderdice

"Oh, Butch, I can't—I just can't!" protested the alarmed Hicks,
helpless, as the big athlete towed him from the trench, "I—I can't play
ball, and I don't want to be shown up before all that mob! It's all right
at Bannister, in class-games, but—Oh, can't you play the game with eight
fellows?"

"That is just what we intend to do!" said Butch, with grim humor.
"But—we'll have a dummy in the ninth position, to make the people believe
we have a full nine! Cheer up, Hicks—'In the bright lexicon of youth
there ain't no such word as fail,' you say! As for your making a fool of
yourself, you haven't brains enough to be classed as one! Now—you'll pay
dearly for your bonehead play."

Ten minutes later, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., as agitated as a prima donna
making her début with the Metropolitan: Opera Company, decorated the
Bannister bench, arrayed in one of the substitutes' baseball suits. It
was too large for his splinter-structure, so that it flapped grotesquely,
giving him a startling resemblance to a scarecrow escaped from a cornfield.
With the thermometer of his spirits registering zero, the dismayed youth,
whose punishment was surely fitting the crime, heard the Umpire bellow:

"Play ball! Batter up! Bannister at bat—Ballard in the field!"

Hicks, that sunny-souled youth, had often daydreamed of himself in a big
game of baseball, for his college. He had vividly imagined a ninth inning
crisis, three of the enemy on base, two out, and a long fly, good for a
home-run, soaring over his head. How he had sprinted—back—back—and at
the last second, reached high in the air, grabbing the soaring spheroid,
and saving the game for his Alma Mater! Often, too, he had stepped up to
bat in the final frame, with two out, one on base, and Bannister a run
behind. With the vast crowd silent and breathless, he had walloped the
ball, over the left-field fence, and jogged around the bases, thrilling to
the thunderous cheers of his comrades. But now—

"Oooo!" shivered Hicks, as though he had just stepped beneath an icy
shower-bath. "I wish I could run away. I just know they'll knock every
ball to me, and I couldn't catch one with a sheriff and posse!"

However, since, despite the blithesome Hicks' lack of confidence, it was
that sunny Senior, after all, whom fate—or fortune, accordingly as
each nine viewed it—destined to be the hero of the Bannister-Ballard
Championship baseball contest, the game itself is shoved into such
insignificance that it can be briefly chronicled by recording the events
that led up to T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s, self-prophesied "head-work."

Without Skeet Wigglesworth at shortstop, with the futile Hicks in
right-field, and the confidence of the nine shaken, Captain Butch Brewster
and the Gold and Green players went into the big game, unable to shake off
the feeling that they would be defeated. And when Pitcher Don Carterson,
in his half of the frame, passed the first two Ballard batters, the belief
deepened to conviction. However, a fast double play and a long fly ended
the inning without damage, and Bannister, likewise, had failed to make an
impression on the score-board. In the second, Don promptly showed that he
was striving to rival the late Cy Morgan, of the Athletics, for he promptly
hit two batters and passed the third, whereupon, as sporting-writers
express it, he was "derricked" by Captain Butch.

Placing the deposed twirler in left field, Captain Brewster, as a last
resort, believing the game hopelessly lost, with his star pitcher having
failed, and his relief slabmen, thanks to Hicks, mislaid en route, sent
out to the box one Ichabod Crane, brought in from the position given to
Don Carterson. This cadaverous, skyscraper Senior, who always announced,
himself as originating, "Back at Bedwell Center, Pa., where I come from—"
was well known to fame as the "Champion Horse-Shoe Pitcher of Bucks
County," but his baseball pitching was rather uncertain; like the girl in
the nursery jingle, Ichabod, as a twirler, "When he was good, he was very,
very good, and when he was wild, he was horrid!" Like Christy Mathewson,
after he had pitched a few balls, he knew whether or not he was in
shape for the game, and so did the spectators. With terrific speed and
bewildering curves, Ichabod would have made a star, but his wildness
prevented, and only on very rare days could he control the ball.

Luckily for old Bannister's chances of victory and the Championship, this
was one of the elongated Ichabod's rare days. He ambled into the box, with
the bases full, and promptly struck out a batter. The next rolled to first,
forcing out the runner at home, while the third hitter under Ichabod's
régime drove out a long fly to center-field. Thus the game settled to one
of the most memorable contests that Ballard Field had ever witnessed, a
pitchers' battle between the awkward, bean-pole youth from "Bedwell Center,
Pa.," and Bob Forsythe, the crack Ballard twirler. It was a fight long
to be remembered, with hits as scarce as auks' eggs, and runs out of the
reckoning, for six innings.