The Zane Grey Megapack. Zane Grey
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some fuss about you being a ringer. We don’t know you, and we don’t care what Jacktown thinks. But the fact is, our pitcher hurt his arm and can’t play. Either we play or forfeit the game. If you can pitch we’ll be glad to have you. How about it?”
Chase assented readily, and moved to the haywagon with Hutchinson, while the crowd hooted and yelled. Small boys kept up a running pace with the wagon, and were not above flinging pebbles along with shouts of defiance. At the end of the village opened up a broad green meadow, upon which was the playground. There was a barn to one side, where the wagon emptied its load; and here the young men went within to put on their uniforms.
The uniform handed to Chase was the one belonging to the disabled pitcher, who must have been a worthy son of Ajax. For Chase was no stripling, yet he was lost in its reach and girth. The color of it stunned him. Brightest of bright red flannel, trimmed with white stripes, with white cotton stockings, this gorgeous suit voiced the rustic lads’ enthusiasm for the great national game.
But when Chase went outside and saw the uniforms decorating the proud persons of the Jacktown nine, he could hardly suppress a wild burst of mirth. For they wore blue caps, pink shirts, green trousers, and red stockings. Most of them were minus shoes, and judging from their activity were as well off without them.
What was most striking to Chase, after the uniforms, was the deadly earnestness of the players of both teams. This attitude toward the game extended to the spectators crowding on the field. Chase did not need to be told that the whole of Jacktown was present and much of Brownsville.
Hutchinson came up to Chase then, tossed a ball to him, and said they had better have a little practice. After Chase had warmed up he began throwing the ball with greater speed and giving it a certain twist which made it curve. This was something he had recently learned. At first Hutchinson was plainly mystified; he could not get his hands on the ball. It would hit him on the fingers or wrists, and finally a swift in-shoot struck him in the stomach. Wherefore he came up to Chase and said:
“I never saw a ball jump like that. What’d you do to it?”
“I’m throwing curves.”
A light broke over the schoolmaster’s face, and it was one of pleasure. “I’ve read about it. You are throwing the new way. But these lads never heard of a curve. They’ll break their backs trying to hit the ball. Now tell me how I shall know when you are going to throw a curve.”
“You sign for what you want. When you kneel back of the batter sign to me, one finger for fastball, two fingers for a curve.”
“Good!” cried Hutchinson.
After a little more practice, he managed with the aid of his lately acquired knowledge to get in front of Chase’s curves and to stop them. Presently a pompous individual wearing the Jacktown uniform came up to Chase and Hutchinson.
“Battin’ order,” he said, waving his pencil.
Hutchinson gave the names of his players, and when he mentioned Chase’s the Jacktown man either misunderstood or was inclined to be facetious.
“Chaseaway? Is thet his name? Darn me, if he won’t chase away to the tall timber.”
He was the captain, and with a great show of authority called both teams ’round the home plate for the purpose of being admonished, lectured, and told how to play the game by the umpire. Chase had not seen this official, and when he did see him his jaw dropped. The umpire wore skin-tight velveteen knee-trousers, black stockings, and low shoes with buckles. His striped shirt was arranged in a full blouse, and on the side of his head was stuck very wonderfully a small, jaunty cap. He addressed the players as if he were the arbiter of fate, and he lifted his voice so that the audience could receive the benefit of his eloquence and understand perfectly the irrevocable nature of the decision he was about to render. In conclusion, he recited a number of baseball rules in general and ground-rules in particular, most remarkable in themselves and most glaringly designed to favor the home team.
Chase extracted from the complexity of one of these rules that on a passed ball behind the catcher, or an overthrow at first, when Jacktown was at bat the player could have all the bases he could make; and when Brownsville was at bat, for some inscrutable reason, this same rule did not hold.
Then this master of ceremonies ordered the Jacktown team into the field, tripped like a ballet-dancer to his position behind the catcher, and sang out in a veritable clarion blast: “P-l-a-y b-a-w-l!”
Chase could scarcely remove his gaze from the umpire, but as his turn to bat came in the first inning he directed his attention to the Jacktown pitcher. He remembered that someone had said this important member of the Jacktowns was the village blacksmith.
After one glance, Chase did not doubt it. The pitcher was a man of enormous build, and his bared right arm looked like a branch of a rugged oak-tree. The first ball he shot toward the home-plate resembled a thin white streak.
“O-n-e S-t r-i-k-e!” shrieked the umpire.
Two more balls similar to the first retired the batter, and three more performed the same office for the second batter. It was Chase’s turn next. He was a natural hitter, and had perfect confidence. But as the first ball zipped past him, looking about the size of a pea, he knew he had never before faced such terrific speed. Nor did he have power to see in that farmer blacksmith one of the greatest pitchers the game was ever to produce. Chase struck at the next two balls and was called out. Then the Jacktown players trooped in, to the wild clamor of their supporters.
When Chase saw some of the big Jacktown fellows swing their bats he knew he would have an easy time with them, for they stood with their feet wide apart, and held their bats with the left hand over the right, which made a clean, straight swing impossible. He struck out the first three batters on nine pitched balls.
For several innings it went on in that manner, each club blanking the other. When Brownsville came in for their fifth inning at bat, Chase got Hutchinson to call all the players ’round him in a bunch.
“Boys,” he said, “we can hit this Jacktown pitcher. He throws a straight ball, almost always waist-high. Now, you all swing too hard. Let’s choke the bat, hold it halfway up instead of by the handle, and poke at the ball. Just meet it.”
The first player up, acting on Chase’s advice, placed a stinging hit into right field. Whereupon the Brownsville contingent on the sidelines rose in a body and roared their appreciation of this feat. The second batter hit a ground ball at the shortstop, who fielded it perfectly, but threw wild to the base-man. And the third hitter sent up a very high fly.
The whole Jacktown team made a rush to try to catch the ball when it came down. It went so high that it took sometime to drop, all of which time the Brownsville runners were going like mad ’round the bases. When the ball returned to earth, so many hands were raised to clutch it that it bounced away to the ground. One runner had scored, and two were left, on second and third bases respectively.
Chase walked to the plate with determination. He allowed the first ball to go by, but watched it closely, gauging its speed and height. The next one he met squarely with a solid crack. It shot out over second base, went up and up, far beyond the fielder. Amid the delirious joy of the Brownsville partisans the two runners scored ahead of Chase, and before the ball could be found, he too reached home.
The Jacktown players went to pieces after that, and fumbled so outrageously and threw so erratically that Brownsville scored three more runs before the inning was over.
Plain it was that when Jacktown came in for their bat, nothing short of murder was impossible for them. They were wild-eyed, and hopped along the baselines like Indians on the war-path. But yell and rage and strive all they knew how, it made no difference. They simply could not get their bats to connect with Chase’s curves. They did not know what was wrong.
Chase delivered a slow, easy ball that apparently came sailing like a balloon straight for the plate, and just as the batter swung his bat, the ball suddenly swerved so that he hit nothing but the air. Some of them spun around, so viciously did they swing, but not one of them so much as touched the