TRYING FOR THE TEAM
The paper sport exhaled a lungful of cigarette smoke cynically. "'Fraid, are you?" he said.
Reddy looked up. "Exactly," he replied quickly. "I'm afraid to get in, and you're afraid to keep out." Somehow the laugh was on the paper sport, and he wondered why it was, throughout the rest of the visit, that they treated him like an infant and little Reddy like a man they respected.
Long-legged Frank Berkhart, the famous old catcher, was the most respected man on the team, not because he was the best player—as a matter of fact, he wasn't—but because he seemed absolutely independent of popular opinion, and hence got the best of it. The manager of the team that year was one of the most profane young men I ever knew. But he adored Frank. On the Easter trip one night, after one of the games, the team were frolicking and making a great racket in Frank's room in the hotel. Presently they heard some one hammer a table with a baseball bat; then the authoritative voice of the manager growled out in the sudden silence:
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