So it is no wonder that there was a feeling of nervousness on the part of the coach and the players.
The practice was over. The preliminaries had been arranged, the home team, Randall, having the privilege of being last to bat. Langridge, with final instructions from the coach, took his place in the box.
“Play ball!” fairly howled the umpire, and the game was on.
“Ping!” That was the sound of the bat colliding with the ball, the first ball that Langridge threw. Describing a graceful curve, the white sphere sailed up into the air. Ed Kerr, hoping it might be a foul, had thrown off his mask and was wildly looking for it, but it was winging its way toward Jerry Jackson in right field. A yell went up from the two hundred college supporters of Boxer Hall, but it was changed to a groan when one of the Jersey twins neatly gathered in the fly and put the runner out. Langridge breathed a sigh of relief and struck out the next two men.
Not a man got to first on the Randall team in the initial inning. Kerr knocked a pop fly, but it was caught by the pitcher, who repeated Langridge’s trick and sent the next two men to the bench in short order.
The next three innings saw goose eggs in the squares of both teams, the only hitting that was done being foul tips.
“It’s a pitchers’ battle,” began to be whispered from seat to seat, and so it seemed. In the sixth inning Randall succeeded in getting a man to first on balls, and then began an attempt on the part of the onlooking students of that college to get the pitcher’s “goat,” which, being interpreted, meant to “rattle” him. That he had a “glass arm” was the mildest epithet hurled at him, but Dave Ogden, who was doing the twirling for Boxer Hall, only smiled in a confident sort of way and struck out the next man.
He was not so successful with Kindlings Woodhouse, and the captain hammered out a pretty fly that was good for two bases and sent Bricktop Molloy to third. The Randall boys were rejoicing now, for they saw a chance to score the first run. And the run itself was brought in by the blue-eyed and red-haired Molloy a moment later, when Phil Clinton knocked a hot liner right between the Boxer Hall shortstop and the third baseman. But that ended the fun, though the score was 1 to 0 in favor of the home team.
This may have been an incentive to the visitors, for straightway they began pounding Langridge, and when the seventh inning ended the score was 4 to 2 in favor of Boxer Hall.
“Boys, we’ve got to down ’em!” said Woodhouse fiercely. “Don’t let them put the game on ice this way. Don’t do it. Take a brace.”