“Just leave it to Hicks! I will win the
game and the </i>Championship</i>, for my Alma Mater,
and—I’ll do it by my headwork!”
T. HAVILAND HICKS, JR’S. HEADWORK
“Play Ball! Say, Bannister, are you afraid
to play?”
“Call the game, Mr. Ump.—make ’em
play ball!”
“Batter up! Forfeit the game to Ballard,
Umpire!”
“Lend ’em Ballard’s bat-boy-to make
a full nine!”
Captain Butch Brewster, his honest countenance, as
a moving-picture director would express it, “registering
wrathful dismay,” lumbered toward the Ballard
Field concrete dug-out, in which the Gold and Green
players had entrenched themselves, while from the
stands, the Ballard cohorts vociferated their intense
impatience at the inexplicable delay.
“We have got to play,” he
raged, striding up and down before the bench.
“The game is ten minutes late now, and the crowd
is restless! And here we have only eight
’Varsity players, and no one to make the ninth—not
even a sub.! Oh, I could—”
“That brainless Skeet Wigglesworth!” ejaculated
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., who, arrayed like a lily of
the field, reposed his splinter-structure on the bench
with his comrades. “In some way, he managed
to miss that train from Baltimore!
They didn’t come on the noon C, N. & Q. train,
and there isn’t another one until night.
My directions were as plain as a German war-map, and
it beats me how Skeet got befuddled!”
Gloom, as thick and abysmal as a London fog, hovered
over the Bannister dug-out. On the concrete bench,
the seven Gold and Green athletes, Beef, Monty, Roddy,
Biff, Ichabod, Don, and Cherub, with Team Manager T.
Haviland Hicks, Jr., stared silently at Captain Butch
Brewster, who seemed in imminent peril of exploding.
Something probably never before heard of in the annals
of athletic history had happened. Bannister College,
about to play Ballard the big game for the State Championship,
had lost a short-stop and five substitutes, in some
unfathomable manner, and it was impossible to round
up one other member of the Gold and Green baseball
squad. True, a hundred loyal alumni were in the
stands, but only bona fide students, of
course, were eligible to play the game, and—the
Faculty ruling had kept them at old Bannister!
“Here comes Ballard’s Manager,”
spoke Beef McNaughton, as a brisk, clean-cut youth
advanced, a yellow envelope in hand. “Why,
he has a telegram. Do you suppose Skeet actually
had brains enough to wire an explanation?”
“Telegram for Captain Brewster!” announced
the Ballard collegian, giving the message to that
surprised behemoth. “It was sent in my care—collect,
and the sender, name of Wigglesworth, fired one to
me personally, telling me to deliver this one to Captain
Butch Brewster, and collect from Team Manager Hicks—he
surely didn’t bother to save money! I’ve
been out of town, and just got back to the campus;
of course, the telegrams could not be delivered to
anyone but me, hence the delay.”
