Weatherby's Inning: A Story of College Life and Baseball

by Ralph Henry Barbour

Joe thumped his big mitten and Tracy picked up the ball. The umpire, a rotund little man in a navy-blue blouse shirt, ran nimbly to his position.

“First man!” cried Joe confidently.

The batsman was the Robinson captain and center-fielder, Wood. Tracy was not greatly afraid of Wood, and so saved his arm by pitching a few slow balls, none of which the Robinson captain was able to touch. When he struck out the Erskine cheers rang across the field. Richman came next. He was the first of the Brown’s tail-enders on the batting list, and he followed the way of his captain, while the purple flags fluttered joyously.

Perhaps Tracy was overconfident, for when Regan, the enemy’s right-fielder, stepped to the plate, he shook his head at Joe’s signal for an outshoot, and sent a straight, slow ball over the corner of the base. And Regan got it on his bat and sent it arching in easy flight toward second, and raced for the bag.

“Mine!” called Stiles.

“Take it!” shouted little Knox, backing him up.

But Stiles didn’t take it. Instead he let it slip through his fingers, and so when Knox had recovered and fielded it to Motter the runner was safe.

“Twenty minutes!” yelled the Robinson coach derisively. Then he began a desperate effort to rattle Gilberth. “On your toes!” he shrieked. “Go on, go on! He daren’t throw it! Way off now! I’ll look out for you! Way off! Now! Now! NOW!”

Tracy was disgusted because he had allowed Regan to hit him, and the shrieks of the coacher annoyed him. Earlier in the game he would not have minded twenty coachers, but now his arm was aching and growing stiff and tired and his temper and nerves were not so well in command. The next batsman was Vose, the Robinson pitcher. Vose was the poorest performer with the stick of any of his team, and in the natural order of things should have been struck out without difficulty. But this time he found the second ball that came to him and hit it safely into right-field, and Regan took second. Then came Cox, the head of the batting list, and swung his ash wickedly while he waited.