Nid and Nod

by Ralph Henry Barbour

“Never you mind how,” said Ned sharply. “That’s not the question. Laurie’s gone and put himself in a hole, and you’ve got to help pull him out. Will you do it?”

Kewpie was again silent for a moment. Then he nodded. “Sure,” he said dubiously. “I’ll do what I can, but—”

“There aren’t any ‘buts,’” declared Ned. “If you’ll take hold seriously and do your best and learn to pitch—well, fairly decently, Kewpie, Laurie and I’ll look after the rest of it. We’ll see that you get your chance somehow with the team.”

“How are you going to do it?” asked Kewpie.

Ned shrugged. “Don’t know yet. That’ll come later. Now, what do you say? Will you be a game sport and buckle into it, or are you going to throw us down? You’ll have to quit bluffing about what you can do and work like the dickens, Kewpie. You’ll have to quit eating sweet stuff and starchy things and get rid of about ten pounds, too. Well?”

Kewpie looked solemnly back at Ned for an instant. Then he nodded shortly. “I’ll do it,” he said soberly. “Let’s go.”

The next day, which was a Saturday, the baseball candidates forsook the gymnasium and went out on the field. The ground was still soft in spots, and the diamond was not used. There was a long session at the batting-net and plenty of fielding work to follow, and of course, the pitching staff unlimbered and “shot ’em over” for awhile. Beedle, Pemberton, and Croft comprised the staff at present, with two or three aspirants applying for membership. George Pemberton fell to Laurie’s share. Pemberton was not so good as Nate Beedle, but he had done good work for the team last year and he was a “comer.” Laurie, taking Pemberton’s shoots in his big mitten, for the first time since he had been transferred from the out-field to a position behind the plate, watched his pitcher’s work. Before this, Laurie had concerned himself wholly with the ball. Now he gave attention to the behavior of Pemberton, studying the latter’s stand, his wind-up, the way his body and pitching arm came forward, the way the ball left his hand. More than once Laurie became so engrossed with the pitcher that the ball got by him entirely. He even tried to discern how Pemberton placed his fingers around the sphere in order to pitch that famous slow one of his that had foiled the best batsmen of the enemy last spring. But at the distance Laurie couldn’t get it.

Pemberton was eighteen, tall, rather thin, rather awkward until he stepped into the box and took a baseball in his capable hand. After that he was as easy and graceful as a tiger. The difference between Pemberton’s smooth wind-up and delivery and Kewpie’s laborious and jerky performance brought Laurie a sigh of despair. As he stopped a high one with his mitt and quite dexterously plucked it from the air with his right hand, Laurie was more than ever convinced that the campaign on which he and Ned and Kewpie had embarked last evening so grimly and determinedly was foredoomed to failure. Gee! Kewpie would never be able to pitch like George Pemberton if he lived to be a hundred years old and practised twenty-four hours a day! Laurie almost wished that he had been born tongue-tied! Later, returning to the gymnasium, Laurie ranged himself beside Pemberton. He had provided himself with a ball, and now he offered it to the pitcher. “Say, George, show me how you hold it for that floater of yours, will you?” he said.

Pemberton took the ball good-naturedly enough. “What are you trying to do, Nod?” he asked. “Get my job away from me? Well, here’s the way I hold it.” He placed his long fingers about the ball with careful regard for the seams. “But holding it isn’t more than half of it, Nod. You see, you’ve got to flip it away just right. Your thumb puts the drag on it, see? When you let go of it it starts away like this.” Pemberton swung his arm through slowly and let the ball trickle from his hand. Laurie recovered it from a few paces away and stared at it in puzzled fashion. He guessed he wouldn’t be able to learn much about pitching that way. Pemberton continued his explanation carelessly. “You see, you’ve got to start it off with the right spin. That’s what keeps it up after a straight ball would begin to drop. Now you take the ‘fade-away.’ I can’t pitch it, but I know how it’s done. You start it like this.”