Jimmy got a fine round of applause and a lot of advice as to what to do. It was evident that many of the audience would be satisfied with nothing less than a home-run, but, on the other hand, the advice he got from the bench and the coachers was to “just tap it, Jimmy!” Jimmy did not so well as the stand demanded and did better than his teammates advised. He smote it. He didn’t smite at once, though. He let Whitten put one straight over that looked too low to Jimmy and just right to the umpire, and he let Whitten follow that strike with two deceitful hooks that looked fine at first and then didn’t. And then, when Whitten tried to sneak one over again opposite his knee-pads, Jimmy did his smiting. Jimmy got that ball on the one square inch of his bat best calculated to produce results, a square inch located about four inches from the end, and he put all his contempt for Mount Morris and Whitten and, incidentally, Star Meyer, into his swing, and the ball traveled away with a crack that was heartening indeed to the three impatient runners, shot over second-baseman’s upthrust glove, still ascending, went curving into center field at a place where neither the guardian of that territory nor his left-hand neighbor had any chance of reaching it, and finally dropped to earth to roll joyfully along the sward pursued by two pairs of agitated green legs!
Need I narrate that all Grafton arose as one and shrieked hysterical delight? Or that the bases, filled a scant moment before, were speedily emptied? Or that Jimmy, finding them empty and having his choice of any, decided to annex second and then, urged on by coachers more capable of judging the demands of the moment, spurned second and set his heart on third—and would have gone tearing home if Guy Murtha himself hadn’t seized him forcibly and thrust him back to the bag? Well, perhaps you wouldn’t have guessed the latter details, but I fancy you’d have surmised the others. That hit of Jimmy’s went down in local history as one of the famous hits of the national pastime. It wasn’t that it won the game, for the game was already captured. Had he struck out Grafton would still have been returned the victor that afternoon. But there was something beautifully satisfying about it, one might almost say artistic. The audience was on the qui vive for it, the setting was right to the most minute detail and it was made when and where it would do the most good. To be sure, it might have been a home-run and so scored four tallies instead of three, but I maintain—and I am supported by Dud and Nick and Hugh and half the school—that there is nearly always the element of luck in a home-run, whereas Jimmy’s three-bagger was a solid, meritorious, honestly-earned hit as soul-satisfying as any homer ever lifted over a fence!
Perhaps you think I am dwelling over-long on the glory of that performance and to the holding up of the game. But as a matter of fact it ended the game there and then to all intents and purposes. To be sure, Gordon did get to first on a pass, while the cheering was still going on, but nobody cared, any more than they cared a minute later when Gus Weston fanned. Anything that might happen now would be an anti-climax. The audience was satisfied, surfeited. Mount Morris had no fight left in her and went out in one, two, three order in the ninth.
Subsequently there was chaos and noise and the sight of numerous scarlet-and-gray-hosed heroes bobbing about above a sea of joyful faces and open mouths. And Mount Morris trotted subduedly off the field, after returning Grafton’s cheer, and was next seen attired in street clothes being borne in hacks to the station, a number of rather tired-looking but still smiling young gentlemen whom Fate had used unkindly. And yet, as they passed Lothrop Hall they tossed a final cheer behind, and there was a grimness and determination in the tone of it that seemed to say: “Make the most of your triumph, Grafton! Our turn comes next!”
CHAPTER XXV
LEFT BEHIND
Grafton jubilated and made glad. Nate Leddy spent a sorrowful evening and refused the comfort offered by his roommate. Gus Weston was inclined to be talkative about his share in the victory, but no one took Gus seriously. Of all those who had taken part in the contest, it remained to Jimmy Logan alone to be triumphant. Jimmy triumphed and made no bones about it. I don’t mean that he went around throwing his chest out or figuratively crowning himself with laurel and with bay. Oh, not at all. Jimmy was not self-assertive in the least. He only smiled when laudation came his way, and strove to impress others as being firmly of the idea that what he had done had been nothing to speak of, absolutely nothing. Only, now that it had been mentioned, wasn’t it a joke on Star Meyer? Star hadn’t made a hit in the game and had fielded—well, anyone knew what Star’s fielding was like! And then, just when he had a chance to really do something for himself and the team, Pete had yanked him away from the plate. Not, however, that, in Jimmy’s belief, Star would have done anything. Probably quite the contrary and otherwise. Star, he reflected compassionately, must be feeling rather cheap, eh?
Jimmy fairly haunted Star’s waking hours for the next day or two. No matter where Star went, there also was Jimmy, Jimmy with a sympathetic mien and a sly twinkle in his eye. Star ran across him in corridors, on the Green, on the Campus, on the field, everywhere. And, on Sunday afternoon, trying to find sanctuary in the library, he hid himself behind an atlas of the world in a secluded corner, only to hear a few minutes later the sound of footsteps on the floor and to glance over the top of his book into the sweetly condoling countenance of Jimmy. Star dropped the atlas with a mutter of despair and sought his room.
There were plenty who predicted that Jimmy had ousted Star from center field, and Jimmy himself believed that he had, and yet when Wednesday came around, bringing final examinations to an end and Yarrow High School to the scene, Jimmy again decorated the bench and it was Star who ambled out to center field! And, oh, the chagrin of Jimmy!
There isn’t much to tell of that game. Yarrow had been selected because she was not calculated to make hard work for Grafton, and she proved the wisdom of the selection. Brunswick started in the box for the Scarlet-and-Gray and lasted three innings and a third of the next. Then Dud went to the rescue and stopped the onslaught of the enemy. He was instructed not to exert himself and didn’t need to, but, possibly for fear that he might, Gus Weston relieved him in the eighth. Meanwhile Grafton kept her plate clean and scored eight runs on her own account. Except that it kept the players in form and took the place of a game with the second—which team, by the way, was at Greenbank receiving a rather conclusive drubbing from the Mount Morris second nine—that contest might just as well have not been played. Yarrow High was not enough of an opponent to test Grafton’s ability in any line. But it served to keep the enthusiasm up, if anything was needed for such a purpose, and gave the Scarlet-and-Gray something to while away the time with. The next day was to be Graduation Day and many fathers and mothers and assorted relatives and friends were already on hand. The Glee and Mandolin and Banjo Clubs discoursed in the Gymnasium that evening and there was a dance afterwards. The dance, however, was not for the baseball players, or, at least, only a few numbers of it, for they were supposed to be tucked in bed at ten o’clock. Let’s hope that most of them were. I know, though, that Jimmy wasn’t. Jimmy at that particular hour was perched rather precariously on the footboard of Dud’s bed explaining at great length and with a fine flow of language his opinion of Star Meyer and Coach Sargent and Guy Murtha and all others who in any way represented authority in baseball affairs. Jimmy wasn’t nearly through when Dud fell asleep.