He looked with some bewilderment and then beckoned to his catcher.
“I got id,” he said to him. “Dere ain’t noddings here about a curve oder a fast ball; so I gif him a base on balls. Dot must be his veakness.”
He was not far wrong at that, and it was the wisest thing he could have done. But unluckily, although he tried his best, one of the balls that he tried to throw wide came within reach of Joe’s bat and he spanked it for a homer, speeding around the bases and denting the rubber while the crowd chaffed Schiff unmercifully.
The first man up in the Boston’s half of the sixth inning, Thompson, clouted a single to left that sharp fielding prevented from being stretched to a two-bagger. Jackson came next, and was given a base on balls.
Joe himself was as much surprised at this as the spectators. It was rarely that he passed a man to first, especially when that bag was occupied and a pass meant putting a man on second. And a thing that increased the oddity of the occurrence was that there had been no strikes sandwiched in between. He had simply thrown four balls in succession, and not one of them had even cut the corner of the plate.
“Here, this won’t do!” he said to himself. “I’ve got to brace up.”
But the bracing up proved to be unexpectedly difficult. Thornhill bunted the first ball pitched in the direction of third. Joe ran over for it, but the ball bounded out of his hand and before he could retrieve it the batter had reached first and each of the two other runners had advanced a base. The bags were full with no one out.
The stage was set for a double play. Ordinarily, under such conditions, Joe would have made the next batter hit a grounder to the infield with a good chance of two going out on a snappy double.
He tried to do it now, but to his consternation found that his arm refused to obey his head and his will. It felt heavy, inert. His fast ball was that only in name. His curves were floating up wide of the plate.
Gunton caught one of them on the end of his bat and sent out a long sacrifice fly to center, on which Thompson crossed the plate for the Bostons’ first run. It was an out for Gunton, but that was simply a bit of luck, for he had met the ball squarely. And on the throw in, the other runners had reached second and third.