One afternoon, when Ainslee had taken a hand in the batting practice, Bert fed him an outcurve, and the coach smashed it to the back fence. A straight high one that followed it met with no better fate. It was evident that Ainslee had his "batting eye" with him that afternoon, and could not be easily fooled. "Send in the next," he taunted, good-naturedly, "I don't think you can outguess me to-day." A little nettled at his discomfiture, Bert wound up slowly. For some time past he had been quietly trying out a new delivery that he had stumbled upon almost by accident. He called it his "freak" ball. He had thrown it one day to Dick, when, after the regular practice, they were lazily tossing the ball to and fro. It had come in way below where Dick's hands were waiting for it, and the latter was startled. It was a "lulu," he said emphatically. It could not be classed with any of the regulation curves. Bert had kept it under cover until he could get perfect control of it. Now he had got it to the point where he could put it just where he wanted it, and as he looked at the smiling face of the coach he resolved to "uncork" it. He took a long swing and let it go. It came to the plate like a bullet, hesitated, slowed, then dropped down and in, a foot below the wild lunge that the coach made for it. His eyes bulged, and he almost dropped the bat. "What was that?" he asked. "How did you do it? Put over another one." A second one proved just as puzzling, and the coach, throwing his bat aside, came down to the pitcher's box. He was clearly excited. "Now, what was it?" he asked; "it wasn't an incurve, a drop, or a straight, but a sort of combination of them all. It was a new one on me. How do you hold your hand when you throw it?" "Why," replied Bert, "when I throw it, the palm is held toward the ground instead of toward the sky, as it is when I pitch an outcurve. The wrist is turned over and the hand held down with the thumb toward the body, so that when the ball slips off the thumb with a twisting motion it curves in toward the batter. I grip it in the same way as an outcurve. Just as it twists off the thumb I give it a sharp snap of the wrist. It spins up to the plate, goes dead, then curves sharply down and in." "Well," said the coach, "it's certainly a dandy. We must develop it thoroughly, but we'll do it on the quiet. I rather think we'll have a surprise for 'our friends the enemy,' when the race begins. It's just as well to have an ace up our sleeve. That ball is in a class by itself. It just seems to melt while you are trying to locate it. If I were to give it a name at all, I'd call it a 'fadeaway.'" And so Bert's new delivery was christened. As they walked back to the college both were exultant. They would have been still more so, if at that moment they had begun to realize the havoc and dismay that would be spread among their opponents before the season ended by Bert's fadeaway ball. CHAPTER III THE "INSIDE" GAME