Page:America's National Game (1911).djvu/500

 close attention to details Mr. Miller rolled up four errors, and three of them cost three runs.

"The town boys won the game in the first and second innings. Ryan hit an easy one to Miller as soon as the procession started. Mr. Miller picked up the ball with great agility and hurled it with wonderful speed at an elderly gentleman on the top row of the bleachers. Then Reilly threw Cooney's effort so that Beckley could easily have landed it had he been eighteen feet tall. Carroll's two-bagger brought both Colts in.

"In the second Wilmot removed the ball to the left field fence. Mr. Browning threw to Miller, who at once fixed his eye on third base and threw the ball with unerring directness at President Hart, who was posing on the roof of the grandstand with a haughty smile. Wilmot scored. And in the seventh Willie-Forget-Me-Not Hutchinson hit the ball a lick that brought tears to its eyes. Kittridge, who was just due, got a strong reverse English on the leather and started an artesian well in far-away left. Willie came right home.

"Bierbauer's single and a measly throw by Kittridge gave a run to O'Neil's pets in the second. Beckley's beautiful triple, and a sacrifice by Carroll fetched another, and in the ninth Reilly hit the ball a welt that caused it to back out over the north wall. That was all.

"Grandpa Anson wasn't feeling real well, and said several saucy things to the umpire out loud. He was on first and Dahlen was on second when Carroll hit down to Bierbauer. That person choked the ball on the ground and thereby removed both the man Anson and the man Dahlen. The former claimed interference and tried to explain things to McQuaid in a voice that could have been heard at the stockyards. McQuaid pulled out his watch and began to study the figures, whereupon the big captain moved grandly to the bench, and the show went on."

Mr. Ralph D. Paine prefaced one of his able articles on our national game, published in the Outing Magazine a few years ago, with these words:

"After the allied armies had stormed the walls of Peking, seven years ago, the British officers hastened to lay out cricket and hockey fields in the spacious grounds of the Temple of Heaven. Before skirmish-firing had ceased to vex the city's suburbs 'The Peking Field-Sports Club' had been organized, with an 'honorary secretary' of the Bengal Lancers. We correspondents viewed these proceedings with much interest and began reluctantly to agree with the popular opinion that the English are the only genuine sporting race.