Keystone Kids Read Free

chair in shirtsleeves and slippers.
    “Spike! How’d you like to come up to the Dodgers?”
    A fan whirred on the wall. Otherwise silence hung over the room.
    “You want us to come up to the Dodgers? Right now?” There was anxiety in his tone and firmness also.
    “We want you to come up.”
    “You mean I should leave Bob, Mr. Fuller?” Was that what the man was saying? Leave Bob, the best guy that ever lived, and go up there alone to that club? Not a chance!
    The other was laughing. He shot a glance at Grouchy. Then he laughed some more. It was a pleasant, agreeable laugh, a laugh that said: I know. I am used to dealing with folks, to getting along with people.
    “Well now... maybe... we could even find a place for Bob, too.”
    “Gee!” The anxiety left his voice and the heaviness dropped from his heart. Imagine! Exchanging twelve hundred dollars for three thousand a year. “Gee! That’d be fine. But look, you don’t mean to tell me the Dodgers are getting rid of guys like Ginger Crane and Eddie Davis?”
    The stranger passed his hand over his forehead. “I don’t know what’s in their minds up there. I haven’t any idea what they plan on, Spike. They don’t let me in on their confidence. It’s a very different outfit from what it was under Dave Leonard; it’s run differently since he went to the Browns. All I know is I had orders to check on you boys again and see whether you were ready for the big time. Grouchy says you are. I guess I’d have to agree. How they’ll play you, or where, I don’t pretend to know. Ginger Crane isn’t the man he was around short five years ago for the Cubs. No secret about that. He can’t take it any more when the diamonds get hard and sun-baked toward the end of the season. His legs are going. Then there’s Street on third; well... they’ll work it out some way, I guess. When do you think you could get off?”
    “You mean to go... to leave... to go North?”
    “That’s what I mean.”
    Leave Nashville! Go North! It was almost like leaving home. Leave all the boys and old Grouchy; why, Grouchy wasn’t a bad guy if you worked. He didn’t stand for any loafing, but he wasn’t a bad guy. Grouchy could have insisted on keeping them there all summer. And the fans, too. The fans who were your friends, the fans who followed you every night, who shelled out when you hit a homer for them in a crucial game. Exchange all that for a possible berth on the Dodgers. Just the idea sort of took your breath away.
    The stranger was talking. “Where’s your stuff, Spike? Where you boys live?”
    “Out to the boarding-house, Mr. Fuller. It’s Mis’ Hampton’s boarding-house on McGavock Street.”
    “Think you could get out there in a taxi and grab your stuff and be ready to take the midnight plane from the airport? If I could get you reservations, that is?”
    The midnight plane for New York! Half an hour ago he was coming into the room to get a dressing-down from old Grouchy and maybe hear how much of a fine would be slapped on. Now they were talking about the midnight plane for New York!
    Hey, Bob! Hey, Bobby! We’re going up to the Dodgers!

3
    S PIKE LOOKED OVER at Bob and Bob glanced back quickly at Spike, both thinking the same thing. Last night this time we were eating supper in Mrs. Hampton’s boarding-house on McGavock Street in Belmont Heights, Nashville. Now here we are dashing across Brooklyn Bridge in a limousine with the Dodgers, while up ahead a siren blares and snorts. That’s the police escort. Seems like in this league the top teams get a police escort when they have to make a train at the station.
    Nashville to Brooklyn. Why, it was only one day, yet a day containing a thousand hours. Surely it was a thousand hours since that supper in Nashville. First of all the long plane ride over a dozen cities, clusters of twinkling lights far below, while everyone dozed save Spike and Bob, far too excited for sleep. Then the descent into the airport at La Guardia