Page:America's National Game (1911).djvu/179

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AMERICA'S NATIONAL GAME
149

first innings the score stood 3 to 0 in favor of the Red Stockings, who were playing with their usual confidence and in splendid form. In the next three innings, however, the Atlantics got in four runs and shut out the visitors, thereby securing a lead of one run. Friends of the Atlantics began to enthuse over the situation; but the Cincinnati players, with the sublime courage that ever characterized their game, rallied, and in the next two innings gained two runs to one for the Atlantics, tieing the score, which remained unchanged in the ninth.

At the end of the ninth innings the Atlantics gathered up their bats, and the crowd, assuming that the game had ended with a draw, were preparing to leave the grounds, when Harry Wright, captain and manager of the Reds, with the bulldog tenacity for which his race—the English—is famed the world over, protested to the umpire that the game was not ended. He knew that the rules required a tie game, under such circumstances, to be continued. A sharp controversy ensued, in which the captain of the Atlantics, quite satisfied to having played the world-beaters to a tie, contended that the game was over. Finally the umpire and captains of both teams agreed to refer the question to Mr. Henry Chadwick, Chairman of the Committee on Rules of the National Association of Base Ball Players, who was in attendance at the game, and to abide by his decision. Mr. Chadwick without hesitation declared that Mr. Wright's contention was in accordance with the rules and that the game must at once be resumed.

The tenth innings began under renewed excitement.