ng machinery was in process of
oiling--the batting and fielding practice of either side in turn, the
pitchers lazily warming up, the motley crew on the side lines in their
amusing and alert play of high-low. Helen, fascinated by the players'
movements, the accurate interception of stinging grounders, the
graceful parabolas of long flies to the deep outfield, as well as by
the spectacle of the orderly base and coaching lines laid out on the
smooth, close-clipped greensward, watched as though in a new medium of
sight. This was little like anything she had ever seen.

A yell from ten thousand throats announced that the Giants'--and the
crowd's--favorite was to pitch. Another yell, though less in volume,
indicated that the opposing pitcher also was named and approved, not
from any delight in the selection, but merely that the choice was made.
The umpires in their sober blue uniforms took their places; the home
team went into the field; the pitcher picked up the new white ball and
settled his foot firmly on the slab--and the game was on.

It can serve no useful purpose now, when that game is done and its
year's pennant determined, to play over the two hours' traffic of it.
Suffice it to say that the tide of battle rose and fell sufficiently to
keep forty thousand delirious spectators on their feet at least one
quarter of the time. Nothing of Oriental calm about the crowd that
day; nothing of passive acceptance of whatever the Fates might have in
store. Every soul within that enclosure was a rabid partisan, bound up
in the fortune of the fray; and if the concentrated desire of forty
thousand minds could avail aught, the home team should certainly have
felt the psychic urge.

But apparently they did not, or perhaps the opposing cohorts felt a
far-off urge more potent still, for the game wore on to the seventh
inning with the home team still one run behind.

"Seventh inning; everybody up!" twenty thousand informed the other
twenty thousand. And everybody rose, the forty thousand almost as one
man.

"Now then, you Tim!" shrieked a voice behind Helen's ear. And Tim
responded with a two-base hit to the left field crowd. Another sharp
crack of the ball against the bat, and men running at lightning speed,
one to first base, one desperately rounding third and toward the home
plate with the run needed to tie the score. But the Chicago team were
busy as well. As from a catapult the ball shot home to the catcher,
waiting