College sports -- Juvenile fiction; College stories
Without Skeet Wigglesworth at shortstop, with the futile Hicks in
right-field, and the confidence of the nine shaken, Captain Butch Brewster
and the Gold and Green players went into the big game, unable to shake off
the feeling that they would be defeated. And when Pitcher Don Carterson,
in his half of the frame, passed the first two Ballard batters, the belief
deepened to conviction. However, a fast double play and a long fly ended
the inning without damage, and Bannister, likewise, had failed to make an
impression on the score-board. In the second, Don promptly showed that he
was striving to rival the late Cy Morgan, of the Athletics, for he promptly
hit two batters and passed the third, whereupon, as sporting-writers
express it, he was "derricked" by Captain Butch.
Placing the deposed twirler in left field, Captain Brewster, as a last
resort, believing the game hopelessly lost, with his star pitcher having
failed, and his relief slabmen, thanks to Hicks, mislaid _en route_, sent
out to the box one Ichabod Crane, brought in from the position given to
Don Carterson. This cadaverous, skyscraper Senior, who always announced,
himself as originating, "Back at Bedwell Center, Pa., where I come from--"
was well known to fame as the "Champion Horse-Shoe Pitcher of Bucks
County," but his baseball pitching was rather uncertain; like the girl in
the nursery jingle, Ichabod, as a twirler, "When he was good, he was very,
very good, and when he was wild, he was _horrid_!" Like Christy Mathewson,
after he had pitched a few balls, he knew whether or not he was in
shape for the game, and so did the spectators. With terrific speed and
bewildering curves, Ichabod would have made a star, but his wildness
prevented, and only on very rare days could he control the ball.
Luckily for old Bannister's chances of victory and the Championship, this
was one of the elongated Ichabod's rare days. He ambled into the box, with
the bases full, and promptly struck out a batter. The next rolled to first,
forcing out the runner at home, while the third hitter under Ichabod's
régime drove out a long fly to center-field. Thus the game settled to one
of the most memorable contests that Ballard Field had ever witnessed, a
pitchers' battle between the awkward, bean-pole youth from "Bedwell Center,
Pa.," and Bob Forsythe, the crack Ballard twirler. It was a fight long
to be remembered, with hits as scarce as auks' eggs, and runs out of the
reckoning, for six innings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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