Keystone Kids by John R. Tunis

sure taking it from the pitchers. They’re throwing at his head. Seems like he’s been on the ground most of every game he’s played so far.”
    “Well, that’s the correct treatment for a busher who thinks he can hit, isn’t it?” Spike was not over-sympathetic.
    “Yeah, but this Klein’s a Jewish boy.”
    The elder Russell, seated on his bed in the act of removing his shoes and socks from tired feet, looked up quickly. Had his brother been listening to other and older men on the team?
    “Oh? He’s Jewish, is he?”
    “Sure, didn’t you know that?” Then after a moment Bob added with authority, “Won’t last.”
    Now Spike knew. It was the same record, the same words and music. He replied quickly, “Why won’t he last?”
    “ ’Cause he’s Jewish, that’s why. Man, the bench jockeys’ll get him. They’ll ride that baby to death, you see if they don’t. The pitchers’ll dust him off, too. Besides, those Jewish boys can’t take it.”
    His brother’s tone and his words irritated Spike. That phrase, he recalled, had jarred on him when Swanson first spoke it. Now it rankled. “What makes you think so, Bobby? How ’bout Newman on the Travelers and Stern with the Crackers and...”
    “Aw, they’re yellow. No guts,” announced his brother with the finality of a radio announcer reading a commercial. It was the same line, the same expression, the same verdict Spike had heard previously. “Everyone knows it,” continued the younger Russell.
    Spike glanced over at his brother. “Why? Who’s everyone?”
    “Everyone. All the fellows. That throw he made this afternoon on the double steal, remember? It was supposed to be to second; man, it hit the dirt ten feet in front of me.”
    “Maybe if you’d had that dusting off and fast balls chucked at your noggin all afternoon, you’d be a little nervous, too.”
    “Maybe. Let’s watch him next time. But the boys all say he won’t last.”
    Spike hung his coat on a hanger in the closet, and turned. “He sure can’t if the gang doesn’t give him some support. D’ja notice when he was chasing that foul fly in the fourth into our dugout, the boys on the bench let him tumble right in. The poor guy like to kill hisself.”
    “I noticed that. They should have yelled. I yelled.”
    “So’d I. He never heard—he doesn’t know our voices yet, and the coaches were shouting, and everything. But they should have called out in the dugout, those guys sitting there. That’s their business. D’ja see, he barked all the skin off his right elbow as it was?”
    “Yeah. This ballclub’s queer, all right. There are so many cliques and gangs... Say, Spike! You know you owe me a nickel.”
    “By gosh, that’s right. So I do.”
    Since their earliest days in outlaw ball the two always had had a pool into which each one paid a nickel whenever he made an error. They used the money every winter to buy themselves a Christmas dinner at the Andrew Jackson and thus escape Mrs. Hampton’s boarding-house on McGavock Street. Back with Charlotte and Savannah in the Sally League that five cents was money. As they earned more money, Bob wanted to increase the ante, but Spike wouldn’t hear of such a thing.
    “Say, how we stand now?”
    Spike drew out his little black notebook and consulted it. In this book he tried every day to write up after the game any information he had obtained that afternoon about the way to play the hitters, details of the pitchers he had faced, facts about their own play around second, and other items pertaining to their trade. He also kept score of their pool, too.
    “Why, look here! That’s funny! We’re exactly even so far at forty-five cents apiece. Yep, and we’re batting close, too. I’m up to one point of you, Bob.”
    Bob sank into an easy chair and opened up an evening paper. “That’s great. Say... get a load of this gent.” And he began to read from the sports pages.
    “We sat on the Brooklyn bench this afternoon for a while