s, so's he'd lay off me and watch the pastime from
the grandstand. He lost a cigar store shootin' craps, a pool room
bettin' with the customers and a delicatessen because he eat all the
stock himself. I got him a job on the road sellin' sportin' goods, and
the only thing he sold all year was a pitcher's glove at $1.25. He
bought that himself.

Now the thing is--why did I keep a guy like that on my club for the
lengthy space of seven years? The newspaper birds claimed Hector had
seen me murder somebody or somethin', because they says I wouldn't let
him in a ball park with a ticket, if he didn't have _somethin'_ on me
that must be kept from the world at any price. Well, it wasn't nothin'
like that--but it was somethin' just as good, as the grocer says. Me
and Hector was kids together in the same ward, and when we started out
to dumfound the world, he had a bankroll which his beloved father left
him and I had nothin' but freckles. I practically lived off that guy
till me and real money became well acquainted, so I couldn't see him
get the worst of it now. It would of broke his heart if he ever got
shoved outa organized baseball--he was a maniac about the game! So
Hector drawed his dough every season, come what may--and at that I was
doin' no more than he did for me.

I managed to keep him busy in some way about the park--always with a
uneyform on--and now and then I let him pitch an innin' when we had the
game locked away in the safe deposit vault. In all the seven years, he
never missed a single day showin' up at the park and he was the
rottenest ball player that ever stood under a shower. Them was
Hector's two records!

Well, I dragged Alex out to the ball park the next day and pointed out
Hector to him. We was playin' St. Looey and along around the sixth
innin' we had the game sewed up so tight that they couldn't of won it
in a raffle. I took out Harmon and sent Hector in to pitch.

"Gaze over this bird carefully, Alex!" I says, "because he's the baby
you're gonna pay off on! I claim you are now peerin' at the champion
dub of the world. If you can make a winner outa him or discover what
he has failed to develop that would make him one, I'll not only pay my
end of our bet with a grin, but I'll throw in a weddin' chest of silver
for you and Eve Rossiter!"

"Write that down!" says Alex; "and sign your full name to it!"

"You don't think I'd welsh on you, do you?" I says, gettin' sore.

"I don't know