Page:Baseball Joe on the School Nine.djvu/222

208 and though the visitors got one in their half of the seventh, again making the score one in their favor, in the eighth our friends got three, while the visitors got only two. So that at the close of the eighth the score was: Excelsior, 10; Morningside 10.

"A tie! A tie!" cried hundreds of voices. Indeed it had pretty nearly been a tie game all the way through, and it might go to ten innings or more.

"We've got to beat 'em!" declared Captain Ward. "Joe, whitewash 'em this inning, and in the next we'll get the winning run."

"I'll do it!" confidently promised the young pitcher, and he did. He was tossing the ball according to his old form again, and not a man landed his stick on it during the first half of the ninth. Then, as the home team came up for their last whacks (except in the event of the score being a tie), they were wildly greeted by their schoolmates.

"One run to beat 'em! Only one!" yelled the crowd.

"I guess it's all up with us," remarked the visiting captain to his men, as they took the field. "They're bound to get that one."

"Not if I can help it!" exclaimed the pitcher fiercely.