The Giants were “slipping.”
There was no blinking the fact. The New York public admitted it with dismay. The newspapers of all the other league cities proclaimed it with delight.
Not slipping fast, but slipping surely.
Not that they were quitting. They were game to the core. Everybody was working desperately to hold on to the slender lead that they had fought for so gallantly in the early part of the season. McRae and Robson, crafty old foxes that they were, worked day and night to bolster up the weak places. They changed the batting order. They used their pinch hitters. They put the team through morning practice. They perfected the “inside stuff.” They worked every trick known to the game.
But still the Giants kept slipping. The batting was far below the usual standard. The men “fought” the ball instead of fielding it cleanly. The pitching staff was too limited. Hughson and Joe were pitching magnificent ball, but they were the only first-string pitchers that could be absolutely relied on. Some of the second string men, notably Jim, were doing well, but now that every game was so important, McRae did not dare to put them in. The strain was apt to be too much for any but the veterans.
There were times when the Giants seemed to throw off the baleful paralysis that was holding them and play in something of their old brilliant form. But too many defeats were mixed in with victories, and all the time those scrappy Chicagos, seldom losing, kept closing up the gap, until when the last week of the season arrived they were right on the Giants’ heels.
By the mere chance of the schedule, the Chicagos were to wind up the season with the New Yorks on the Polo Grounds. Four games were to be played. Before the series commenced, the Giants were just one game in the lead. If the Chicagos could take three games out of the four, they would win the championship.
The Giants had the advantage of playing on their own grounds and in the presence of the home crowds. That was an advantage not to be despised. Moreover, they only had to win two out of the four, while the Chicagos were required to win three.
But, on the other hand, the men from the Windy City were on the aggressive, while the Giants were on the defensive. And the Chicagos had been climbing while the New Yorks had been slipping. These facts had a significance all their own, and despite the apparent odds in favor of the home team, opinion was about evenly divided as to who would bear off the victory.
McRae figured on pitching Hughson in the first game of the series. The veteran had always had the “Indian sign” on the Chicagos, and the chances were that he would win his game. If he did, the Giants would only have to take one out of the remaining three. Joe and Markwith would try for the second and third. If by an evil fate they lost both, McRae could again call on Hughson for the fourth and deciding game.