Payson made one or two trial changes on the nine the following day, and put the fellows through two full hours of the hardest sort of practice in preparation for the next game on the schedule, that with Nordham Academy, the following Saturday. Nordham usually gave a good account of herself on diamond or gridiron, and this spring her baseball men had marched half way through a difficult schedule without a defeat. As a usual thing Nordham was played fully a fortnight later in the season, and Durfee rather wished now that he had not agreed when the manager had advocated giving Nordham an earlier date, for, judging from the game with Carrel’s, Yardley was scarcely in a condition to break Nordham’s long list of victories.
Payson’s changes didn’t work out to his satisfaction, and on Friday the team was back in its old shape. There was no practice game that day, but there was some sharp fielding and a whole lot of work in front of the batting nets, and Reid and Servis, the regular pitchers, as well as Snow and Wallace, second-string twirlers, pitched to the limit of their capacity. At five o’clock some two dozen very, very tired youths trooped up to the gymnasium and strove to ease the soreness in their muscles under the shower baths. Durfee was doubtful of the wisdom of working the players so hard the day before a game and expressed his doubts to Alf in the locker-room while they were wearily pulling off their togs. Alf, however, didn’t agree with his captain.
“You trust Payson, old chap; he knows how much we’ll stand. I believe a good, hard workout was what we needed. I’m tired, but I know mighty well I’ll be feeling like a fighting cock in the morning. Just now, though, I’ll ’fess up that I’d like to be tumbled into a warm bath, have a good rubbing down and then be put to sleep to the strains of soft music. Who’s going to pitch to-morrow?”
“Servis is going to start,” replied Durfee. “Reid will relieve him in the fifth, I suppose, if he lasts that long. If we get a safe lead—which we aren’t likely to, I guess—Snow or Wallace will have a try-out in the last inning or two. I hope we’ll have as bully a day as Wednesday was.”
“So do I,” answered Alf. “I hate to try and play ball in a silly rainstorm, or with the thermometer flirting with the freezing point. No danger of that, though; it’s going to be fair and warm to-morrow. And we’re going to have a dandy old game with those Nordhamites, those Unbeaten Terrors of the Diamond!”
“Rather!” said Harry Durfee, grimly. “They’re going to give us the game of our lives!”
“Sure! And that’s what we’re going to give them,” replied Alf, cheerfully. “I hope to goodness I make a couple of hits to-morrow. I want to fatten my batting average a bit. It’s pretty lean so far this season.”
“Nobody’s been hitting decently yet,” returned Harry. “I haven’t done a thing, either. If it wasn’t for that last part of the Porter game, after the immortal Holmes went to the bad, we wouldn’t any of us have much to our credit in the batting line.”
Alf chuckled.
“That was a cinch, wasn’t it?” he asked. “I suppose this pitcher of Nordham’s is pretty good, isn’t he?”