“He can’t touch you!”
“Missed it by a mile!”
A ball followed, then a foul, then another ball, and a final strike that sent the batter discomfited to the bench.
The next man up raised a towering skyscraper, which Larry gathered in without moving from his tracks, and the third man died, as had the first, on strikes.
The half inning had been short and sharp, and Joe met a tempest of encouraging cheers as he walked in to the bench.
“You’ve got their number, old man!”
“They’ll break their backs trying to hit you!”
“Some bad pitching, I don’t think!”
But Joe had had too much experience to be betrayed into any undue elation. There were eight innings more to come and in that time many things might happen.