CHAPTER XX

SPEEDING UP

St. Louis was in good form on the following day, and a perfect deluge of hits came from their bats. The Giants, too, had a good hitting day, and the fans who like to see free batting had their desire satisfied to the full. And their pleasure was all the greater because the home team had the best of the duel, and came out on top by a score of 17 to 12.

Jim was in the box on the next day, and by superb pitching had the St. Louis sluggers hitting like a kindergarten team. They simply could not solve him. His team mates had scarcely anything to do, and only by the narrowest of margins did he miss turning the Cardinals back without a hit. One hit narrowly escaped the fingers of the second baseman, as he leaped in the air for it. But it did escape him, and counted for the only hit made by the St. Louis in the game. It was a magnificent exhibition and wound up a disastrous trip in a blaze of glory.

Still it could not be denied that the trip had put a big dent in the Giants' aspirations for the pennant. Instead of the twelve games out of sixteen that McRae had asked for, they had only turned in six victories. It was the most miserable record that the Giants had made for years.

"And we call ourselves a good road team!" snorted Curry in disgust, as they settled down in the Pullman for the long ride back from St. Louis to New York. "A bunch of school girls could have done better work."

"Luck was against us," ventured Larry. "It sure was against us."

"Luck, nothing!" exclaimed Curry. "We simply fell down, and fell down hard. The whole League is laughing at us. Look at the way the other Eastern teams held up their end. The Brooklyns copped ten games, the Bostons got eleven, and the Phillies pulled down seven. We ought to sneak back into New York on a freight train instead of riding in Pullmans."

"I guess there won't be any band at the station to meet us," remarked Joe. "But after all, any team is liable to have a slump and play like a lot of dubs. Let's hope we've got all the bad playing out of our systems. From now on we're going to climb."

"That's the way to talk," chimed in Jim. "Of course we can't deny that we've stubbed our toes on this trip. But we know in our heart that we've got the best team in the League. We've got the Indian sign on all of them. The fans that are roasting us now will be shouting their heads off when we get started on our winning streak. Remember, boys, it's a long worm that has no turning."

There was a general laugh at this, and the spirits of the party lightened a little. But not all of the gloom was lifted.

The prediction that their reception in New York would be rather frosty was true. Such high hopes had been built on the result of this trip that the reaction was correspondingly depressing. And what made the Giants feel the change of attitude the more keenly was the fact that while they had been doing so poorly, the Yankees at home had been going "like a house afire." They had taken the lead definitely away from the Clevelands, and it did not seem as though there was any team in their League that could stop them. New York was quite sure that it was going to have one championship team. But it was quite as certain that it was not going to have two. That hope had gone glimmering.

Both teams were occupying the Polo Grounds for the season, while the new park of the Yankees was being completed. The schedule therefore had been arranged so that while one of the teams was playing at home the other was playing somewhere out of town.

Thus on the very day the Giants reached home the Yankees were starting out on their trip to other cities. They went away in the glory of victory. The Giants came home in the gloom of defeat.

The change of sentiment was visible in the first home game that the Giants played. On the preceding day, at their last game, the Yankees had played before a crowd of twenty-five thousand. The first game of the Giants drew scarcely more than three thousand. Many of these were the holders of free season passes, others, like the reporters, had to be there, while the rest were made up of the chronic fans who followed the Giants through thick and thin. There was no enthusiasm, and even the fact that the Giants won did not dispel the funereal atmosphere.

And then the Giants began to climb!

At first the process did not attract much attention. The public was so thoroughly disheartened by the downfall of their favorites in the West, that they took it for granted that they were out of the running for the pennant. Of course it was assumed that they would finish in the first division--it was very seldom that a New York team could not be depended on to do that--and that by some kind of miracle it might be possible to finish second. But there was very little consolation in that. New York wanted a winner or nothing. If the Giants could not fly the championship flag at the Polo Grounds, nobody cared very much whether they came in second or eighth or anywhere between.

The first team to visit the Polo Grounds was the Bostons. They had greatly improved their game since the beginning of the season, and were even thought to have a look-in for the flag. They chuckled to themselves at the thought that they would catch the Giants in the slump that had begun out West and press them still deeper in the direction of the cellar. At first they thought they might even make a clean sweep. They lost the first game, but only by reason of a muff of an easy fly that let in two unearned runs in the sixth. That of course disposed of the clean sweep idea, but still, three out of four would do. But when they lost the second game also, their jubilation began to subside. Now the best they could hope for was an even break. But again they lost, and the climax was put to their discomfiture when the Giants simply walked away with the fourth game by a score of 10 to 0.

But even with this series of four in a row captured by the Giants, the public refused to enthuse. It might have been only a flash in the pan. It is true that the sporting writers were beginning to sit up and take notice. Most of their time hitherto had been spent in advising McRae through the columns of their paper how he might strengthen his team for next year. The present season of course was past praying for. Yet there was a distinct chirking up on the part of the scribes, although they carefully refrained from making any favorable predictions that afterward they might be sorry for. They would wait awhile and see. Besides, the Brooklyns were coming next, and they had usually found it easy to defeat the Giants. If the Giants could hold the men from over the big bridge to an even break, it might mean a great deal.

The Brooklyns came, saw and--were conquered. Four times in succession they went down before superb pitching and heavy batting. Four times they called on their heavy sluggers and their best boxmen, but the Giants rode over them roughshod. The sporting writers sat up and rubbed their eyes. Was this the same team that had come home forlorn and bedraggled after their last trip? Had the Giants really come to life? Was the pennant still a possibility?

By this time the public had begun to wake up. The stands at the Polo Grounds no longer looked like a desert. The crowds began to pack the subway cars on their way up to the grounds. Everywhere the question was beginning to be asked: "What do you think of the Giants? Have they still got a chance?"

It was the Phillies' turn next, and they had also to bend the knee. The Giants took them into camp as easily as they had the Braves and the Dodgers. And to rub it in, two of the games were shutouts.

Twelve games in a row, and the Giants tearing through the other teams like so many runaway horses!