And I’ll bet Connie was willin’ to agree with me before it was over.
Well, the Chief worked against the Big Rube in that game. We beat ’em, but they give us a battle and it was Parker that made it close. We’d gone along nothin’ and nothin’ till the seventh, and then Rube walks Collins and Baker lifts one over that little old wall. You’d think by this time them New York pitchers would know better than to give that guy anything he can hit.
In their part o’ the ninth the Chief still had ’em shut out and two down, and the crowd was goin’ home; but Doyle gets hit in the sleeve with a pitched ball and it’s Speed’s turn. He hits a foul pretty near straight up, but Schang misjudges it. Then he lifts another one and this time McInnes drops it. He’d ought to of been out twice. The Chief tries to make him hit at a bad one then, because he’d got him two strikes and nothin’. He hit at it all right—kissed it for three bases between Strunk and Joyce! And it was a wild pitch that he hit. Doyle scores, o’ course, and the bugs suddenly decide not to go home just yet. I fully expected to see him steal home and get away with it, but Murray cut into the first ball and lined out to Barry.
Plank beat Matty two to one the next day in New York, and again Speed and his rabbit’s foot give us an awful argument. Matty wasn’t so good as usual and we really ought to of beat him bad. Two different times Strunk was on second waitin’ for any kind o’ wallop, and both times Barry cracked ’em down the third-base line like a shot. Speed stopped the first one with his stomach and extricated the pill just in time to nail Barry at first base and retire the side. The next time he throwed his glove in front of his face in self-defense and the ball stuck in it.
In the sixth innin’ Schang was on third base and Plank on first, and two down, and Murphy combed an awful one to Speed’s left. He didn’t have time to stoop over and he just stuck out his foot. The ball hit it and caromed in two hops right into Doyle’s hands on second base before Plank got there. Then in the seventh Speed bunts one and Baker trips and falls goin’ after it or he’d of threw him out a mile. They was two gone; so Speed steals second, and, o’ course, Schang has to make a bad peg right at that time and lets him go to third. Then Collins boots one on Murray and they’ve got a run. But it didn’t do ’em no good, because Collins and Baker and McInnes come up in the ninth and walloped ’em where Parker couldn’t reach ’em.
Comin’ back to Philly on the train that night, I says to Connie:
“What do you think o’ that Parker bird now?”
“He’s lucky, all right,” says Connie smilin’; “but we won’t hold it against him if he don’t beat us with it.”
“It ain’t too late,” I says. “He ain’t pulled his real stuff yet.”
The whole bunch was talkin’ about him and his luck, and sayin’ it was about time for things to break against him. I warned ’em that they wasn’t no chance—that it was permanent with him.
Bush and Tesreau hooked up next day and neither o’ them had much stuff. Everybody was hittin’ and it looked like anybody’s game right up to the ninth. Speed had got on every time he come up—the wind blowin’ his fly balls away from the outfielders and the infielders bootin’ when he hit ’em on the ground.
When the ninth started the score was seven apiece. Connie and McGraw both had their whole pitchin’ staffs warmin’ up. The crowd was wild, because they’d been all kinds of action. They wasn’t no danger of anybody’s leavin’ their seats before this game was over.
Well, Bescher is walked to start with and Connie’s about ready to give Bush the hook; but Doyle pops out tryin’ to bunt. Then Speed gets two strikes and two balls, and it looked to me like the next one was right over the heart; but Connolly calls it a ball and gives him another chance. He whales the groove ball to the fence in left center and gets round to third on it, while Bescher scores. Right then Bush comes out and the Chief goes in. He whiffs Murray and has two strikes on Merkle when Speed makes a break for home—and, o’ course, that was the one ball Schang dropped in the whole serious!
They had a two-run lead on us then and it looked like a cinch for them to hold it, because the minute Tesreau showed a sign o’ weakenin’ McGraw was sure to holler for Matty or the Rube. But you know how quick that bunch of ourn can make a two-run lead look sick. Before McGraw could get Jeff out o’ there we had two on the bases.
Then Rube comes in and fills ’em up by walkin’ Joyce. It was Eddie’s turn to wallop and if he didn’t do nothin’ we had Baker comin’ up next. This time Collins saved Baker the trouble and whanged one clear to the woods. Everybody scored but him—and he could of, too, if it’d been necessary.
In the clubhouse the boys naturally felt pretty good. We’d copped three in a row and it looked like we’d make it four straight, because we had the Chief to send back at ’em the followin’ day.
“Your friend Parker is lucky,” the boys says to me, “but it don’t look like he could stop us now.”
I felt the
