“And he’d do it too,” laughed Jim. “I’ll bet an umpire in those days would have had a hard job to get life insurance. It would have been good dope to get a tip before the game as to just what team Pharaoh wanted to win.”
“I think you men are awfully irreverent,” reproved Mabel, who, with Clara, was seated in the first row in the stand right behind the players’ bench and had overheard the conversation.
“Not at all,” laughed Jim. “It’s a big compliment to Pharaoh to suggest that he would have been a baseball fan if he hadn’t been born too soon. It puts him on a level with the President of the United States.” 221
The teams were playing on the cricket field used by the English residents, and not far off the Pyramids reared their stately heads toward the sky. It was a strange conjunction of the past and the present, and all were more or less impressed by it.
“Well, I must confess that in my wildest dreams of seasons gone by, I never supposed that I would be pitching here in Egypt in the shadow of the pyramids,” remarked Joe.
“It certainly takes a fellow back to ancient days,” put in Jim. “Just imagine playing before a crowd of those old Egyptians!”
“Well, they had fun in their day just as well as we have,” said McRae. “Just the same, they didn’t know how good baseball is.”
“They didn’t even know anything about yelling to kill the umpire when a wrong decision was given,” remarked Joe, with a grin, and at this there was a general laugh.
There was a big outpouring of Europeans and visiting Americans, and under the inspiration of their interest and applause both teams played brilliantly. It was a hammer-and-tongs contest from start to finish, and resulted in the first tie of the trip, neither team being able to score, although the game went to eleven innings.
“Still two ahead,” McRae said to Brennan, as they left the grounds after the game. 222