The third fellow to the bat was a notable hitter, and nearly every one thought he would lace out at least a two-bagger, bringing in probably three runs. Instead, however, he knocked two fouls, and then sent a liner down to first base, which the baseman caught with ease; and that ended the chance for scoring.
“That’s pulling it out of the fire!” cried McRae. The showing had been a good one, but what made the inning so remarkable was the fact that in one-two-three order the Giants got the bases filled exactly as they had been filled before. Then, more amazing still, the next man was pitched out, the second man knocked a pop fly to the pitcher, and it was Joe himself, coming to the bat, hit out a liner to third base, which was gathered in by the baseman, thus ending the Giants hope of scoring.
“Well, what do you know about that!” cried Brennan. “The inning on each side was exactly alike, with the exception that our third man out flied to first base, while your man flied to third.”
But that ended the similarity both in batting and in scoring, for in the eighth inning the Giants added another run to their score, and held this lead to the end, even though the All-Americans fought desperately in the effort to tie the score.
“Oh, we had to win,” said one of the Giants. “Too many of our folks looking at us to lose.”
Many members of the teams had their wives 81 or sisters with them, and defeat would have been galling under the eyes of the fair spectators.
Then, too, the Giants had their reputation to sustain as the Champions of the World. On the other hand, the All-Americans were anxious to show that even though they had not been in the World’s Series, they ought to have been—and it was a keen delight to them to make their adversaries bite the dust.
Add to this the fact that there was a strong spirit of rivalry, good-natured but intense, between the scrappy McRae and the equally pugnacious Brennan, whose team had been nosed out by the Giants in that last desperate race down the stretch for the pennant, and it is no wonder that the crowds kept getting larger in every city they played, that the gate receipts made the managers chuckle, that the great city papers gave extended reports of the games and that the baseball trip around the world began to engross the attention of every lover of sports in the country.
Joe had never been in finer fettle. His fast balls went over the plate like bullets from a gatling gun. His fadeaway was working to a charm. He wound the ball near the batters’ necks and curved it out of reach of their bats with an ease and precision that explained to the applauding crowds why he was rated as the foremost pitcher of the day. 82
Jim, too, showed the effect of his season’s work and Joe’s helpful coaching, and between the two they accounted for three of the games won by the Giants before they reached Colorado. Two other games had gone to the All-Americans in slap-dash, ding-dong finishes, and it was an even thing as to which team would have the most games to its credit by the time they had reached the Pacific coast.