Football -- Juvenile fiction; Schools -- Juvenile fiction
“Then how--” Leonard blinked at the other in the gloom. “But you’ve
said you were! If you weren’t at New London, how did you play first
base for the--the Maple Leaf nine?”
“I didn’t.”
Leonard laughed flatly. “I guess I’m stupid,” he said.
“I’ve got your promise that this goes no further?” asked Renneker.
Leonard nodded vigorously. “All right. I didn’t play on that team,
Grant. I couldn’t. I’m no good at all at baseball. That was my brother.”
“Your brother!” exclaimed Leonard.
“Yes. He looks like me, a whole lot like me, although if you saw us
together you wouldn’t be fooled long. He’s two years older than I am,
nearly three, and he’s an inch taller but not quite so heavy. His name
is George Ralston Renneker, Ralston after my mother’s folks. That’s
why I knew what was up when the train boy put that name on me. George
is--oh, he’s all right, Grant, but he’s a nut. Sort of crazy about
some things. We’ve always been great pals, but I’ve bawled him out a
thousand times. He hasn’t any idea about the value of money and he
keeps right on spending it just as if we still had it. When he gets
flat and father won’t come across he goes off and plays baseball or
hockey or anything to get some coin. He can do just about anything
fairly well, you see. I suppose it isn’t always just the money,
either, for he’s nuts on all sorts of sports, and he has to keep going
at something or bust. Once he rode in a steeplechase near home and
got thrown and had a couple of ribs broken. There wasn’t any money in
it that time. He just did it for fun, for the adventure. I fancy he’d
jump off the Woolworth Tower with an umbrella if there was enough money
waiting him below! Sometimes he makes quite a lot of money. Once he
drew down a hundred and fifty for a ten-round preliminary bout over in
Philadelphia. He boxes rather better than he does anything, I fancy.
He was the ‘Trenton Kid’ that night. Usually he goes under the name of
George Ralston. He’s a nut, Grant.”
Leonard digested this remarkable information in silence for a moment.
Then: “But if it wasn’t you, Renneker,” he exclaimed, “why did you let
them drop you from the team? I don’t see that.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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