“Guess you’d better let someone else in, Baker,” he said. “Sorry, but we need this, old man.”
Dud passed him the ball, tried to say something, he didn’t know what, and turned, white-faced and with hanging head, toward the bench.
CHAPTER XX
JIMMY ENCOURAGES
That game with Lawrence Textile went to thirteen innings and ended, still a tie, 1 to 1, to allow the visitors to get their train. Nate Leddy, going to the rescue with three on, two out and the pitcher’s score one-and-three, pulled out of the hole very neatly. Instead of attempting the difficult feat of striking the batsman out, Nate dropped one over knee-high and the ball went straight up from the swinging bat and straight down again into Gordon’s mitten, and Lawrence saw her golden opportunity vanish. After that for three innings, although the suspense kept up every moment, neither side got anywhere near a score. Leddy and Fairway, the latter showing fatigue and substituting control for speed, were masters every minute. Fairway’s work to the very end was such that the spectators applauded him every time he left the mound or went to bat. After that hair-raising, nerve-racking tenth inning, Grafton could feel only satisfaction at the outcome. Even Captain Murtha had no regrets, and if Coach Sargent was disappointed he made no sign.
Perhaps, aside from the Lawrence players, the only disconsolate one was Dud. He had hurried from his shower straight to his room, his main desire being to get out of the way before the game ended and the fellows came piling into the Field House, and so he didn’t learn the outcome of the contest until Jimmy arrived, half an hour later. By that time Dud’s common sense had come to the rescue and he was able to review his performance in the pitcher’s box without being prompted to suicide. After all, he had fared no worse than Gus Weston, he told himself comfortingly, and even Ben Myatt had begun distributing passes before he had been taken out; although, of course, Ben had far more excuse for giving out, since he had pitched six innings.
Dud was still wondering what had happened to him. He had been all right until Boynton had made that memorable muff. After that he hadn’t been able to get the ball where he wanted it. It wasn’t that his arm had tired. It had been just as good as when he had started. And, as Dud recalled it now, he hadn’t been nervous; not, anyway, until he had issued that first pass in the tenth. It just seemed, looking back on the fiasco, that the ball had suddenly simply refused to go where it was sent! He wondered whether Mr. Sargent would ever give him another chance, whether the fellows were secretly laughing at him. Well, he had surely afforded Bert Winslow a fine opportunity to say “I told you so!” Bert had all along been politely contemptuous of Dud’s ambition to make the first team, although of late he had been very decent to him indeed. He rather hoped he wouldn’t run across Bert for a day or two!
Dud didn’t make the mistake of feeling himself disgraced, at least not after the first few miserable minutes, but he did feel that he had failed pretty badly as a pitcher, and that before the whole school, and he dreaded having to face the fellows again. He was pondering the idea of remaining away from dining-hall that evening when Jimmy came tramping along the corridor and entered.
“Hello, you! Where’d you get to?” Jimmy skimmed his cap to the bed and threw himself tiredly into a chair. “Did you see the game out?”
Dud shook his head. “What—what was the score?” he asked dejectedly.