Finkler's Field: A Story of School and Baseball

by Ralph Henry Barbour

“We’re going to hammer you all over the lot,” announced one of the boys on the wall, also a Towner, as the day students at Maple Ridge were called.

“Pound away, Joe,” replied Sam with a laugh. “I’ll give you a quarter apiece for all the hits you make off me, my lad.”

“Give me a quarter for every time I get my base?” asked Joe Williams eagerly.

“I will not! You’d get in front of the ball and get hit! I know you, Joseph!”

Ensued a spirited discussion of the chances of Boarders and Towners to win the annual baseball game which was to be played the following Saturday. As many of the group were Towners, the latter had the better of the argument, however the contest might turn out.

It was half-past four of an afternoon in the latter part of April. The fellows had been back from Spring Recess but three days, and today’s practice represented the first real work that had been done out of doors since the autumn. The first choice men were on the diamond, and the dozen or so adorning the bench and the stone wall were substitutes, if we except Sam Phillips. Sam, a thickset, jolly-looking youth of sixteen, was very little like the popular conception of a good ball-player. But in spite of his appearance, Sam was, in his way, a wonder. He was the best pitcher that Maple Ridge had ever known; what Coach Shay called “a natural-born twirler.” It had been Sam’s effective and heady work that had wrested the victory from Maple Ridge’s dearly hated rival, Chase Academy, last year, and when the Towners talked glibly of winning Saturday’s game they knew all the while that as long as Sam Phillips was in the box for the Boarders their chance of a victory was about as big as an under-sized pea.

Maple Ridge School lies a mile and a half from the town of Charlemont, Massachusetts. The campus overlooks a wide valley of farm and meadow pricked out with white homesteads, with the river trailing like a blue ribbon down the centre. Southward the smoky haze shows where Springfield lies. Back of the school property rises the steep slope of Maple Ridge. The buildings are five in number; the two dormitories, North and South; the recitation hall, or School Building as it is called; the Residence, abode of the Principal, Doctor Benedict—more familiarly known as “Benny”—and the gymnasium. Behind the gymnasium the land slopes to a terrace wide enough to accommodate two tennis courts. Another slope brings one to the level of the playground. Not very extensive, this latter; not half large enough for its purpose, in fact, for behind the campus Finkler’s meadow juts in, cutting the playground down to a width scarcely more than half of that of the campus itself. The restrictions of the athletic field had long been a matter for dissatisfaction amongst the students of Maple Ridge. There wasn’t room for a running-track, the gridiron filled almost every foot of field, and as a baseball ground the place was decidedly unsatisfactory, since a very long hit to right field invariably went over the stone wall into Finkler’s meadow, necessitating a ground rule to the effect that over the wall was good for but two bases. The eastward limit of the school property was marked by the brook that meandered between the edge of the playground and the first slope of the Ridge. On the other or northern side the playground was limited by a high iron fence backed with an evergreen hedge. Beyond lay the big estate of one of Charlemont’s wealthiest mill owners. As seeking to recover a ball knocked into Caldwell grounds would have been an almost hopeless effort, the diamond had been slightly skewed until the foul-line on that side ran clear to the brook. But by securing a clear left field it had been necessary to sacrifice right field, and as a result the foul-line past first ended abruptly against Farmer Finkler’s stone wall but a short distance behind the bag, and during a game one or more Preparatory Class youngsters were posted nearby for the sole purpose of jumping or scrambling over the wall and recovering balls. The wall was well built, but no wall erected without mortar can withstand such constant assaults and, as may be supposed, Farmer Finkler’s wall, in spring and fall, was always in need of repairing. As a matter of fact, no Maple Ridge boy bothered his head much when in getting over he toppled a stone to the ground, for between the owner of the meadow and the students existed a feud of long standing.

“Two down and a man on first!” shouted the coach, tossing the ball and swinging his bat. There was a crack and away arched the sphere. But Mr. Shay had put too much swing into that hit, for the ball came to earth in Finkler’s meadow.