In the sixth inning the Bostons took their turn at scoring. Kopf sent an easy grounder to Iredell, who ordinarily would have eaten it up. This time, however, he fumbled it for a moment, and then in his haste to make up for the mishap threw wild to first. Burkett made a great jump for it, but it went high over his head to the right field fence, and before Burkett could regain it Kopf was on third. Mitchell tried to bring him home, but his efforts resulted in a weak grounder along the third base line. It looked as though the ball would roll over the foul line, and Willis waited too long. It proved to be fair, and by this time Mitchell was legging it for second. Willis threw low and the ball hit the bag, bounding out into center field. Wheeler ran in and got it, making a superb throw to the plate. But it was too late, and both Kopf and Mitchell had scored, putting Boston in the lead by two runs to one.
Joe put on steam and struck out the next three batters. But the mischief had been done. Two miserable errors had given them as many unearned runs. Now all they had to do was to keep the Giants scoreless and the game would be won.
Poor Iredell and Willis were disconsolate as they came in to the bench and their discomfiture was not lessened by the tongue lashing that McRae gave them. Joe, too, might naturally have been angered at the wretched support accorded to him in a game where he was showing such airtight pitching, but he was too fair and generous to find fault with comrades for a blunder that all athletes make more or less often.
“Never mind, boys,” he said to them in an undertone, as he sat beside them on the bench. “Just get busy with your bats and we’ll pull the game out of the fire yet.”
Although the Giants made a desperate rally and in each of the next two innings got men on second and third, the score was unchanged and the game still “in the fire” when the eighth inning ended. Joe in the meantime had pitched with such effect that in the two innings not a man reached first.
The ninth inning came, and the Giants took the field for the last time.
“Now Joe,” said McRae, as the former picked up his glove to walk out to the box, “hold them down just for one more inning, and we’ll have a chance either to tie or win, if our boobs can wake up enough to do a little batting. The head of their batting order is coming up, but the way you’ve been pitching up to now they all look alike to you.”
“I’ll pitch my head off if necessary,” Joe assured him.
The twirling that Joe did in that last inning was phenomenal. His control of the ball was almost uncanny. It writhed and twisted about the bats like a snake. Neale, the slugger of the Braves, struck out on the first three balls pitched. Kopf lifted a foul that came down straight over the plate, where Mylert gathered it in. Mitchell drove the ball straight over Joe’s head, but the latter leaped high in the air and speared it with his gloved hand, while the stands rocked with applause.