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Hitting safely, he started the game with a rush. With Dorr up, the Star infield played for a bunt. Like clockwork Dorr dumped the first ball as Blake got his flying start for second base. Morrissey tore in for the ball, got it on the run and snapped it underhand to Healy, beating the runner by an inch. The fast Blake, with a long slide, made third base. The stands stamped. The bleachers howled. White, next man up, batted a high fly to left field. This was a sun field and the hardest to play in the league. Red Gilbat was the only man who ever played it well. He judged the fly, waited under it, took a step hack, then forward, and deliberately caught the ball in his gloved hand. A throw-in to catch the runner scoring from third base would have been futile, but it was not like Red Gilbat to fail to try. He tossed the ball to O’Brien. And Blake scored amid applause.

”What do you know about that?” ejaculated Delaney, wiping his moist face. ”I never before saw our nutty Redhead pull off a play like that.”

Some of the players yelled at Red, ”This is a two-handed league, you bat!”

The first five players on the list for the Grays were left-handed batters, and against a right- handed pitcher whose most effective ball for them was a high fast one over the outer corner they would naturally hit toward left field. It was no surprise to see Hanley bat a skyscraper out to left. Red had to run to get under it. He braced himself rather unusually for a fielder. He tried to catch the ball in his bare right hand and muffed it, Hanley got to second on the play while the audience roared. When they got through there was some roaring among the Rochester players. Scott and Captain Healy roared at Red, and Red roared back at them.

”It’s all off. Red never did that before,” cried Delaney in despair. ”He’s gone clean bughouse now.”

Babcock was the next man up and he likewise hit to left. It was a low, twisting ball–half fly, half liner–and a difficult one to field. Gilbat ran with great bounds, and though he might have got two hands on the ball he did not try, but this time caught it in his right, retiring the side.

The Stars trotted in, Scott and Healy and Kane, all veterans, looking like thunderclouds. Red ambled in the last and he seemed very nonchalant.

”By Gosh, I’d ‘a’ ketched that one I muffed if I’d had time to change hands,” he said with a grin, and he exposed a handful of peanuts. He had refused to drop the peanuts to make the catch with two hands. That explained the mystery. It was funny, yet nobody laughed. There was that run chalked up against the Stars, and this game had to be won.

”Red, I–I want to take the team home in the lead,” said Delaney, and it was plain that he suppressed strong feeling. ”You didn’t play the game, you know.”

Red appeared mightily ashamed.

”Del, I’ll git that run back,” he said.

Then he strode to the plate, swinging his wagon- tongue bat. For all his awkward position in the box he looked what he was–a formidable hitter. He seemed to tower over the pitcher–Red was six feet one–and he scowled and shook his bat at Wehying and called, ”Put one over–you wienerwurst!” Wehying was anything but red- headed, and he wasted so many balls on Red that it looked as if he might pass him. He would have passed him, too, if Red had not stepped over on the fourth ball and swung on it. White at second base leaped high for the stinging hit, and failed to reach it. The ball struck and bounded for the fence. When Babcock fielded it in, Red was standing on third base, and the bleachers groaned.