Nid and Nod

by Ralph Henry Barbour

In the sixth things began to happen, all at once and on all sides. Farview started the trouble by hitting through short-stop for a base. Nate pitched ten deliveries before the next batsman at last fouled out to first baseman. Then came an attempted sacrifice. The batsman laid down the ball scarcely two feet from the plate, and the runner on first was off. Laurie dashed his mask aside, scooped up the trickling sphere, stepped forward, and sped it to second. The throw was perfect, and Pope got the runner. Hillman’s applauded delightedly, and from the Blue’s bench came the approving voice of the coach, “Good work, Turner!” Laurie, accepting his mask from a Farview batsman, reflected that maybe nothing was nearly as bad as you pictured it beforehand, and remembered with surprise that in making the throw he had not consciously thought a thing about it; hadn’t hoped he would make it or feared that he wouldn’t; had simply picked up the ball and plugged it across the diamond! Exit the bugaboo!

With two down, however, Farview refused to yield the inning. Instead, she poked a hit across second base and another past third and so added another tally. That seemed to distress Nate Beedle unnecessarily, and he proceeded to pass the next batsman. And after that, with two gone and two strikes and one ball on the succeeding aspirant, he pitched three more balls in succession and passed him, too! Very suddenly the bases were full, and the game seemed about to go glimmering. And at that moment George Pemberton and the scrub catcher strode off around the first base stand, and if the visiting crowd hadn’t been making such a ridiculous noise the thud of ball against mitten might have been heard from back there.

Nate was, in baseball parlance, “as high as a kite.” His first effort against the new batsman was a ball that Laurie only stopped by leaping two feet from the ground. Laurie walked half-way to the pitcher’s box, amid the exultant howls of a joyous foe, shook the ball in Nate’s face, and savagely told him to take his time. Laurie was angry just then. Nate was snappy and told Laurie to “go on back and quit beefing! I’ll get him!” Laurie signaled for a high ball; the batter “ate up” low ones. Nate hesitated, shook his head. Laurie called for one close in then. Nate wound up and stepped forward. The result was a wide one that made the score two balls and no strikes. On the bench Mr. Mulford was watching with sharp eyes. Nate followed with a fast ball that was struck at too late. Laurie’s heart retreated down his throat again. Once more he signaled a high one. This time Nate made no demur, but the ball failed to go over. A substitute detached himself from the group on the bench and sped around the stand. Laurie, holding the ball, glanced toward the coach. He got the expected sign. Nate, too, saw, and began to pull at his glove. Captain Dave joined him at the mound. Nate looked gloomy and mutinous. Then George Pemberton came into sight, paused an instant at the bench, and strode toward the box.

Hillman’s cheered and Farview jeered. Nate went to the bench with hanging head. As he tossed the ball to the relief pitcher Laurie saw Mr. Mulford pull Nate to a seat beside him and put a big arm over the sorrowful one’s shoulders. Then George Pemberton was pitching his warm-up balls, and Laurie was devoutly hoping that they weren’t samples of what he would offer later. They were, but Laurie didn’t know it then, for, with three balls and but one strike on him, the over-eager Farview third baseman struck at George’s first offering and got it. The bases emptied, and red legs streaked for the plate. But far out in deep center field Lee Murdock cast one last look over his shoulder, turned, and pulled down the fly, and Hillman’s let loose with a sound that was half a groan of relief and half a yell of joy!

With the score 3 to 0 against her, Hillman’s pulled up even in the last of the sixth. Craig Jones worked a pass; Tom Pope sacrificed him neatly to second; and Captain Dave, functioning perfectly at last in the rôle of clean-up batter, hit for two bases, and both Cooper and Jones scored. Pat Browne was safe on a fielder’s choice, Dave going out at third. Brattle hit safely, and Murdock was passed. The bags were all occupied, and the home team’s cohorts roared exultantly and waved blue banners in air. And Laurie came to bat.

I’d like immensely to tell how Laurie knocked a home run or even a single, but truth compels me to state that he did nothing of the sort. He swung twice at good ones and missed them, and ended by swinging a third time at a very poor one. It remained for Pemberton to deliver the hit and, perhaps because he was a proverbially poor batter and wasn’t feared one bit by Mr. Luders, he selected the second delivery and jabbed it straight at the young gentleman’s head. Luders put up a defensive hand. The ball tipped it and bounded toward second. Three players ran for it. By the time short-stop had got it, Pemberton was galloping up to first, and Pat Browne had slid in a cloud of dust across the plate. A moment later Brattle was caught off second, and the trouble was over for the time.

The seventh began with the score 3 to 3, but it wouldn’t have remained there long if George Pemberton had been allowed to pitch the inning through. George was even wilder than he had indicated. He couldn’t find the plate at all. Four successive balls put a Farview batter on first. One strike, a foul back of the plate that Laurie missed by inches only, and four more balls put another runner on bases. Laurie begged, counseled, threatened. George nodded agreeably and still sent them in anywhere but at the expected spot. When he had pitched one strike and two balls to the third man up, Coach Mulford gave the “high sign” and George, not at all regretfully, it seemed, dropped the ball and gave way to Orville Croft.

Somehow Croft came through unpunished. There were no more passes, for Croft put the ball over the base nicely, but there were so many near-hits that Laurie’s heart was in his mouth almost every minute. If the Hillman’s fielders hadn’t worked like a set of young professionals in that inning awful things would certainly have befallen the Blue. The infield showed real ball playing, and thrice what seemed a safe hit was spoiled. Farview got the first of her runners to third, but he finally died there when Captain Dave dived to the base-line and scooped up a ball that was on its way to deep left.

For Hillman’s the last of the seventh made good its reputation. It was the lucky seventh, and no mistake about it. Luck put Cooper on first when Luders slanted a slow curve against his ribs, and luck decreed that the red-legged short-stop should drop the ball a minute later when Cooper took advantage of Jones’s slam to third. Perhaps luck had something to do with the pass handed to Pope, too, but it certainly didn’t altogether govern Captain Dave’s second long hit that sent in Cooper and Jones and put Hillman’s in a veritable seventh heaven—I almost wrote “inning”—of delight!