In the matter of batting, Holman’s was a weak crowd. Outside Captain Hal Norwin and Ted Purves and Joe Kenton, there wasn’t a dependable hitter on the team. Sometimes Bud Thomas came across with a needed wallop, and occasionally little Charlie Prince, demon third baseman, laid down a nice bunt. But for the rest――why, as Ginger phrased it to himself, “junk!” They tried hard enough, both at practice and in games, and they almost wore out a brand-new batting net, but all to very little purpose. If they had the eye they didn’t have the swing, and vice versa. There was Babe, for instance. Babe was a corking catcher, big enough to block off a runner at the plate, quick enough to cover the whole back-lot on fouls, an unerring shot to second and steady under almost any provocation to be otherwise. But at the bat he was Samson shorn. Babe was a slugger, which is to say that he took a long swing and a hard one and, having connected with the ball, was likely to smash it out into the cinder piles that intervened between the ball field and Conyer’s Creek. The cinder piles meant three bases always, usually four. But, like many other sluggers, Babe was an infrequent hitter. If pitchers would put the old pill between waist and shoulder, Babe could show them something, but pitchers had a deplorable way of sending them over knee-high or working deceptive drops on the big fellow, and, all in all, as a hitter in the pinches Babe was about as much use as salt in a ham sandwich: which, again, is Ginger’s phrase and not mine. This troubled Ginger as much, if not more, than it did Babe. Ginger was a hero worshiper, and Babe was his object of idolatry, and Ginger wanted him 100 per cent perfect. As it was, 75 was a lot nearer the mark. And Ginger, or so he was fully persuaded, knew wherein lay Babe’s weakness. Babe’s bat was too heavy. Other aspiring batsmen might use one bat to-day and another to-morrow, experimenting in the effort to find the weapon best suited to them. But not so Babe. Babe was big and long of arm and powerful, and he craved a bat to match. The one he used, his own private weapon, was a veritable club of Hercules, long and stout and appallingly heavy, of the “wagon-tongue” model, of a dingy gray-black tinge and with the handle wrapped far down with elastic tape. Babe was somewhat obsessed on the subject of that bat. He was convinced that it was the only weapon possible in his case, and convinced that just as soon as Fortune gave him an even break he would make it talk to the extent of .300 or over. Ginger thought contrariwise, and the matter was the basis of frequent arguments between the two. Or, perhaps, arguments is the wrong word, for Babe never would argue about it. Babe was as stubborn as a mule on the subject of that bat.