The Crimson Sweater

by Ralph Henry Barbour

Then came something of a different calibre and Roy stepped down and hit at it. It went by without a jar.

"Strike!" said the umpire.

Again Roy tried his luck, spun half around and recovered himself to find Rollins doing the grinning. Roy grew angry. To have Rollins laugh at him was too much. He gripped his bat and took position again. Then he remembered his grin. It was hard to get it back, but he did it. Roy has an idea that that grin worried Rollins; that as may be, it is a fact that the next ball went so wide of the plate that the catcher had to throw himself on the ground to stop it and Kirby was safe on second.

"Two and two!" cried the catcher, setting his mask firm again. "Right after him, Jim. He's pretty easy."

Jim undoubtedly meant Roy to strike at the next one, but Roy didn't because the ball quite evidently had no intention of coming over the base.

"Three balls," remarked the umpire in a disinterested tone, just as though hundreds of hearts weren't up in hundreds of throats.

For the first time since coming to bat Roy had a gleam of hope. Rollins had put himself in a hole and the next ball would have to be a good one. And it was.

Roy swung sharply to meet it, dropped his bat like a hot potato and streaked for first. Out in left field a cherry and black stockinged youth was gazing inquiringly toward the afternoon sky. Home raced Kirby, around the bases streaked Roy. He had seen the ball now and hope was dying out within him. Left fielder seemed directly under it. But he would run as hard as he knew how, at any rate; there was no harm in that; and you never could tell what would happen in baseball. So Roy went flying across second base and headed for third like a small cyclone in a hurry. And as he did so his heart leaped, for left fielder had suddenly turned and was running sideways and backward by turns out into the field.

He had misjudged it badly. Had he not done so I should have had a different ending to narrate. But he did, and when the ball came to earth he was not quite under it although he made a frantic effort to get it. And by the time he had picked it up and relayed it to shortstop Roy was turning past third. And by the time shortstop had his hands about it and had turned, Roy was almost at the plate. And by the time—But what's the use in drawing a story out in this way? Roy beat that ball to the plate by at least two seconds. And in one more second he was being literally carried to the bench in the midst of a howling, shrieking, dancing mob of Ferry Hillites.

Perhaps Ferry Hill would have continued the game until her third man had been put out had she had a chance. But when the spectators take it into their heads to have a war-dance in the middle of the diamond, ball playing is extremely difficult. So Chub shouted something to the umpire, the scorer slammed his book shut on a score of 8—7 and pandemonium had everything its own way.