“Just meet it sharp!” said Babe to himself. Then his bat swept around in what for Babe was scarcely more than a half-swing, there was a sharp _crack_, and ball and batsman were off at the same instant. And so was Bud, his legs twinkling as he sped for third. The ball streaked, low and at lightning speed, straight across the base line midway between first and second. After its passage first baseman and second baseman picked themselves up from the turf and raced to their bags. In right field a frantic player cupped his hands before the rolling ball, straightened and threw desperately to the plate. But Bud’s spikes spurned the rubber just as the ball began its long bound, and before the sphere had settled into the catcher’s mitten Holman’s shouts proclaimed victory and Bud, breathless but happy, was fighting his way to the bench through a mob of frantic friends.
Half an hour later, seated beside Babe on the dusty red velvet of a day-coach, Ginger was making confession. “It was an awful nervy thing to do, Babe, but, gee, I just had to! Honest, I did, Babe! Look at the fix we was in. We only needed the one run to cop the game, didn’t we? And you ain’t never come through in the pinches with that bat, Babe, have you? Didn’t you say yourself that you ain’t never made a hit off that Cross guy? Sure, you did! I just knew you’d go in there and try to slug out a homer, if you had that big club, Babe, and we didn’t need no homer to win, see? All we needed was just a nice little hit, Babe, like a fellow would make if he just took a short swing and hit the old apple clean. So I says ‘If he don’t have the old bridge timber he’ll have to use one of the other bats, and maybe thataway he’ll come through.’ And so when you wasn’t lookin’ I hid the old blackjack in the stand. Believe me, I was scared! And if――”
“Believe me,” interrupted Babe very, very fiercely, “you had a right to be scared, for I certainly intended to crown you for fair, son!”
Ginger grinned and edged a wee bit closer to the big chap. “Aw, gee,” he said, “I wasn’t caring about no lickin’, Babe. What I was scared of was maybe you wouldn’t make no hit, after all! But you did, didn’t you, Babe?”
“An’――” Ginger’s tone became insinuating――“an’, say, Babe, them light bats ain’t so worse, are they?”