Down the team went to Brownsville, then, just to see how big a score they could roll up.  Back they came from Brownsville so dazed they almost rode past the Kingston station.  For when they had reached the ballground, one of those curious moods that attacks a team as it attacks a single person seized them and took away the whole knack that had won them so many games.  The Brownsvillers, on the other hand, seemed to have been inspired by something in the air.  They simply could not muff the ball or strike out.  They found and pounded the curves of the Kingston pitcher so badly that the substitute battery would have been put in had they not been left behind because it was not thought worth while to pay their fare down to Brownsville.

The upshot of the horrible afternoon was that Brownsville sent Kingston home with its feelings bruised black and blue, and its record done up in cotton.  It was a good thing that Kingston had prepared no bonfire for the victory they had thought would be so easy, because if the defeated nine had been met with such a mockery they would surely have perished of mortification.

The loss of this game—­think of it, the score was 14 to 2!—­tied the Kingstonians with the Charlestonians, and another game was necessary to decide the contest for the pennant.  That game was immediately arranged for commencement week on the Kingston grounds.

And now the Twins, who had resigned themselves to having never a chance on the nine, found themselves suddenly called upon to pitch and catch in the game of the year; for the drubbing the regular pitcher had received had destroyed the confidence of the team in his ability to pitch a second time successfully against the Charlestonians.

To make matters worse, the game was to come almost in the very midst of the final examinations of the year, and the Twins became so mixed up in their efforts to cram into their heads all the knowledge in the world, and to pull out of their fingers all of the curves known to science, that one day Reddy said to Heady: 

“I half believe that when I get up for oral examination I’ll be so rattled that, instead of answering the question, I’ll try to throw the ink-bottle on an upshoot at the professor’s head.”

And Heady answered, even more glumly: 

“I wouldn’t mind that so much; what I’m afraid of is that when you really need to use that out-curve you’ll throw only a few dates at the batter.  I will signal for an out-curve, and you’ll stand in the box and tie yourself in a bow-knot, and throw at me something about Columbus discovering America in 1776; or you’ll reel off some problem about plastering the inside of a room, leaving room for four doors and six windows.”

When the day of the game arrived, however, Reddy and Heady took their positions with the proud satisfaction of knowing that they had passed all their school-book examinations.  Now they wondered what percentage they would make in their baseball examination.