McIntyre, one of the weakest of the Boston batters, trotted up to the plate. The Braves had waked up to the fact that something was the matter with Joe. Their arch-enemy had been delivered into their hands.
The crowning proof of this came a moment later when McIntyre poled a mighty home run between right and center driving in two runs ahead of him, tying the score.
The handwriting on the wall was plain.
Joe was through.
He had been knocked out of the box!
CHAPTER XVII
A BEWILDERING MYSTERY
To be knocked out of the box is a humiliation that every baseball pitcher has had at times to face. No one has ever escaped it if he has remained any length of time in the game. But it had happened so seldom to Joe that it came upon him this time with crushing force.
The crowd, too, seemed stunned. It was almost unbelievable. Baseball Joe, the king of pitchers, the idol of the fans, the hero so recently of that wonderful no-hit game about which people were still talking—Baseball Joe batted out of the box!
But there was the fact that the Bostons were hitting him almost at will, that they had scored four runs in that inning with only one man out.