CHAPTER XXXIII
THE MAN ON THE MOUND
Pop Doyle rapped the rubber and squared away like a man who believed he could drop another one over the fence any time he wished. This was the time to do it, too. This was the time to break the new pitcher’s heart before he could get his feet under him. This was the pinch in the game, with the temporarily faltering tide threatening to flow on and overwhelm the Deers.
Nor was the sympathy of all the visitors with the new pitcher. Curley, Sullivan, and Heines knew that the success of Stranger might mean that at least one of them would receive his release, and, together on the bench, they nursed their ineffective whips, waiting and hoping to see Doyle do things to the southpaw.
What passed in Lefty Locke’s mind as he toed the slab and took Coffin’s signal not even Kennedy could know. Did he remember other occasions when he had faced batters more formidable than Doyle and felt no tremor of apprehension, or was the past a forgotten blank? Was he at that moment the Phil Hazelton who had made good under Kennedy with the majors, or was he Bob Stranger, now pitching for the first time in a game of baseball? Did he remember Elgin, whose trickery had so nearly ended his Big League prospects, or was his present rival and former foe absolutely unknown to him? Whatever he thought at that moment, his face revealed nothing. It was as impassive as a mask; the grim, determined mask of one who knew his task and was ready to meet it.
Coffin, having signaled, put up his glove behind Doyle’s shoulder, and, as he had thrown at old Jack’s hands in the morning, Lefty Locke whipped the ball past the batter’s chin and into the pocket of that yawning mitt. There was no attempt to drive the batter back from the pan, yet Doyle, jerking his head away, heard the umpire declare a strike. Instantly he kicked on the decision, and Hank Bristol flung one of his two bats high into the air. The local fans roared their disapproval, encouraged by these movements of the batter and the manager.
“Robbery!” shouted Bristol.
“Robbery! Robbery!” came from the crowd. “That was a ball!”
Coffin, laughing, snapped the sphere back to Lefty, who stopped it with his gloved right hand, and permitted it to drop into his bare left, the old movement which was so familiar to Kennedy.
“That’s him!” whispered old Jack to himself. “That’s Lefty, sure. Let him get squared away, and they’re through scoring. If they don’t make another run this inning, it’s all off, and we’ve got ’em going.”
Lefty gave little heed to the anxious base runners. He had selected Doyle for his victim, and it was easier and safer to keep after him than to take the chance of throwing to the sacks when it was not necessary to drive the runners back.
Having made his kick, Doyle was satisfied, though Bristol kept it up until warned by the umpire that he would be chased from the game. The next one pitched by Lefty was wide. When it was called a ball, the crowd sarcastically howled at the umpire, and asked him if he was sure it was not a strike.
Peter McLaughlin found it almost impossible to remain on his seat. “You’ve got him!” the old man shouted. “He can’t hit ye, Stranger! He can’t see your fast ones. Give him a curve now, and see what he can do with it.”
Without looking in the direction of the excited hotel proprietor, Lefty nodded and smiled.
“I’m going to try you with a curve, Doyle,” he told the batter. “Let’s see if you can win any shoes off it.”
Coffin called for another straight one across Doyle’s shoulder, but Locke shook his head.
“I told him I was going to pitch a curve,” he said. “Mr. Kennedy showed me one or two this morning. I wonder if I’ve forgotten how to use them?”
“Lay one over anywhere,” invited Doyle, “and I’ll break the fence.”
Even as he spoke, Locke pitched, starting the ball high, and making it take a break across the batter’s shoulders. Whereupon Doyle pounded the air for a second strike.
“Told you you had him foul!” whooped McLaughlin. “How can he hit ’em? He can’t.”
“Make him put ’em across, Pop,” urged Bristol. “Don’t let him fool you again.”
Now, Lefty had deceived Doyle completely by telling him just what he was going to pitch, for the batter had looked for something entirely different.
“Try another,” he entreated. “Give me another like that, and see it go out of the lot.”
“Well,” said Lefty, “I’ll do it, if you’ll agree to swing.”
“Look out for the straight one now!” shouted Elgin from the coaching line. “I know his pitching. That’s the way he mixes ’em――a curve and a straight one. That’s why he didn’t last in the Big League. They got wise to him. Meet it, Pop――meet it!”
But, to the surprise of Elgin, although Lefty swung his arm as if about to waft over a smoker, he made such a beautiful change of pace that Doyle barely saved himself by holding the bat back on the swing. The slow ball dropped to the ground six inches in front of the plate, and Coffin gathered it on the bound.
“That’s two and two,” said Elgin. “It takes only one to hit it.”
Lefty rubbed his bare hand on the hip of Kennedy’s old Blue Stocking pants. “I’ve got another curve,” he observed thoughtfully. “Let me see if I can remember that one.”
He threw it a moment later, the hook which dropped and twisted to the far side of the plate beyond Doyle; and again the batter checked himself on the swing, rejoicing when the umpire’s decision made it three to two.
“Now,” he said, “you’ve got to put it over or hand me a walk. You don’t dare put it across!”
“I’m going to put it across,” promised Lefty; “and of course I’ll have to use a straight one.”
In such a hole some pitchers would have found it necessary to use the straight one. Apparently Locke pitched with that intention. Doyle tried to meet the ball and hoist it over the fence. It was another of those baffling “Johnson hooks” to the outside corner, and he missed by inches.
“You’re out!” cried the umpire; and Peter McLaughlin had a fit then and there.