When the day of the game arrived, however, Reddy and Heady took their positions with the proud satisfaction of knowing that they had passed all their school-book examinations. Now they wondered what percentage they would make in their baseball examination.
Sleepy, however, went out to left-field not knowing where he stood. He knew so little about his books, indeed, that even after the examination was over he could tell none of the fellows what answers he had made to what questions, and so they could not tell him whether or no he had failed ignominiously or passed accidentally. This worry, however, sat very lightly on Sleepy's nerves.
The largest crowd of the year was gathered to witness the greatest game of the year, and Charleston and Kingston were tuned up to the highest pitch they could reach without breaking. The day was perfect, and in the preliminary practice the Kingstonians showed that they were determined to wipe out the disgrace of the Brownsville game, or at least to cover it up with the scalps of the Charlestonians.
At length the Charlestonians were called in by their captain, for they were first at bat. The Kingstonians dispread themselves over the field in their various positions. The umpire tossed to the nervous Reddy what seemed to be a snowball, whose whiteness he immediately covered with dust from the box. The Charlestonian batter came to the plate and tapped it smartly three or four times. The umpire sang out:
"Play-ball!"
Reddy cast a nervous look around the field, then went into a spasm in which he seemed to be trying to "skin the cat" on an invisible turning-pole. Out of the mix-up he suddenly straightened himself. The first baseman saw a dusty white cannon-ball shoot past him, and heard the umpire's dulcet voice growl:
"Strike!"
Which pleased the Kingston audience so mightily that they broke forth into cheers and applause that upset Reddy so completely that the next ball slipped from his hand and came toward the first baseman so gently that he could hardly have missed it had he tried.
The Kingstonian cheer disappeared in a groan as everybody heard that unmistakable whack that resounds whenever the bat and the ball meet face to face. But the very sureness of the hit was its ruination, for it went soaring like a carrier-pigeon straight home to the hands of Sleepy, who, without moving from his place, reached up and took it in.
The Kingston groan was now changed back again to a cheer, and the first batter of the first half of the first inning had scored the first "out."