Lefty then tried an underhanded delivery that was productive of another foul. Then the big Specter center fielder refused to nibble at a coaxer, which evened things once more. “Two and two,” muttered Stillman on the reporters’ bench. “I wonder if he’ll do it? By Jove! He’s got to!” With anxious, admiring eyes he watched his friend’s cool, deliberate, yet not in the least dragging, work. Lefty’s perfect control enabled him to bend the ball over the rubber from any angle. Foul after foul resulted with a nerve-racking regularity which brought the fans to the edges of their seats in tense, breathless suspense. Three balls were called, but the struggle continued. With each swing of the southpaw’s long arm, Schwartz swung his bat, and the ball caromed off in a foul. One could almost have heard a pin drop in the vast inclosure. Even the raucous voices of the coachers had been momentarily stilled. The end came at last, suddenly. When it seemed almost certain that Locke had exhausted every trick at his command, the pitcher, with his toe on one end of the slab, stepped straight out to one side with the other foot, and brought his arm over. The ball left his fingers at the moment when his hand seemed to be extended at full reach above his head. Apparently it was not a curve he threw, but from his extended fingers the sphere shot downward on a slant, to cross the outside corner of the plate. Schwartz struck at it with a sharp, vicious snap――and missed! CHAPTER V ONE FOR LEFTY The roar which went up fairly shook the stands, and testified to a sudden slackening of the tension which had been gripping thousands of loyal fans for the past few minutes. Jack Stillman leaned back in his seat and reached for his cigarette case. “Pretty smooth,” he said, proffering the case to his companions. “That’s what I call pitching out of a hole, and Phil can sure do it to beat the cars.” “Phil?” queried the cub reporter quickly. “Oh, you mean Locke. I keep forgetting that isn’t his real name.” “So do I, to tell the truth,” returned Stillman, drawing in a lungful of smoke. “He took it on account of his father’s prejudice against baseball when he started pitching in the bush last year. When I ran into him this spring in the Hornets’ training camp it was hard as the mischief at first to get used to hearing him called anything but Hazelton. I got over that mighty quick, though, and now it’s just the other way. Well,” he went on, glancing at Eckstein, “if this doesn’t stir the boys up enough to make them hammer out at least one run, they’re not the crowd I take them for.”