The Redheaded Outfield | Page 4

a long slide, made third base. The stands stamped. The bleachers howled. White, next man up, batted a high fly to left field. This was a sun field and the hardest to play in the league. Red Gilbat was the only man who ever played it well. He judged the fly, waited under it, took a step hack, then forward, and deliberately caught the ball in his gloved hand. A throw-in to catch the runner scoring from third base would have been futile, but it was not like Red Gilbat to fail to try. He tossed the ball to O'Brien. And Blake scored amid applause.
``What do you know about that?'' ejaculated Delaney, wiping his moist face. ``I never before saw our nutty Redhead pull off a play like that.''
Some of the players yelled at Red, ``This is a two-handed league, you bat!''
The first five players on the list for the Grays were left-handed batters, and against a right- handed pitcher whose most effective ball for them was a high fast one over the outer corner they would naturally hit toward left field. It was no surprise to see Hanley bat a skyscraper out to left. Red had to run to get under it. He braced himself rather unusually for a fielder. He tried to catch the ball in his bare right hand and muffed it, Hanley got to second on the play while the audience roared. When they got through there was some roaring among the Rochester players. Scott and Captain Healy roared at Red, and Red roared back at them.
``It's all off. Red never did that before,'' cried Delaney in despair. ``He's gone clean bughouse now.''
Babcock was the next man up and he likewise hit to left. It was a low, twisting ball--half fly, half liner--and a difficult one to field. Gilbat ran with great bounds, and though he might have got two hands on the ball he did not try, but this time caught it in his right, retiring the side.
The Stars trotted in, Scott and Healy and Kane, all veterans, looking like thunderclouds. Red ambled in the last and he seemed very nonchalant.
``By Gosh, I'd 'a' ketched that one I muffed if I'd had time to change hands,'' he said with a grin, and he exposed a handful of peanuts. He had refused to drop the peanuts to make the catch with two hands. That explained the mystery. It was funny, yet nobody laughed. There was that run chalked up against the Stars, and this game had to be won.
``Red, I--I want to take the team home in the lead,'' said Delaney, and it was plain that he suppressed strong feeling. ``You didn't play the game, you know.''
Red appeared mightily ashamed.
``Del, I'll git that run back,'' he said.
Then he strode to the plate, swinging his wagon- tongue bat. For all his awkward position in the box he looked what he was--a formidable hitter. He seemed to tower over the pitcher--Red was six feet one--and he scowled and shook his bat at Wehying and called, ``Put one over--you wienerwurst!'' Wehying was anything but red- headed, and he wasted so many balls on Red that it looked as if he might pass him. He would have passed him, too, if Red had not stepped over on the fourth ball and swung on it. White at second base leaped high for the stinging hit, and failed to reach it. The ball struck and bounded for the fence. When Babcock fielded it in, Red was standing on third base, and the bleachers groaned.
Whereupon Chesty Reddy Clammer proceeded to draw attention to himself, and incidentally delay the game, by assorting the bats as if the audience and the game might gladly wait years to see him make a choice.
``Git in the game!'' yelled Delaney.
``Aw, take my bat, Duke of the Abrubsky!'' sarcastically said Dump Kane. When the grouchy Kane offered to lend his bat matters were critical in the Star camp.
Other retorts followed, which Reddy Clammer deigned not to notice. At last he got a bat that suited him--and then, importantly, dramatically, with his cap jauntily riding his red locks, he marched to the plate.
Some wag in the bleachers yelled into the silence, ``Oh, Maggie, your lover has come!''
Not improbably Clammer was thinking first of his presence before the multitude, secondly of his batting average and thirdly of the run to be scored. In this instance he waited and feinted at balls and fouled strikes at length to work his base. When he got to first base suddenly he bolted for second, and in the surprise of the unlooked-for play he made it by a spread-eagle slide. It was a circus steal.
Delaney snorted. Then the look of profound disgust vanished in a flash of light. His huge face beamed.
Reddie Ray was striding