"I'm going to be a ballplayer,' I'd explain. But Dad was not very receptive. "'A ballplayer?' he'd say, throwing his hands up in the air. 'What do you mean? How can you make a living as a ballplayer? I don't understand why a grown man would wear those funny-looking suits in the first place.' "'Well,' I'd answer. 'You see policemen with uniforms on, and other people like that. They change after they're through working. It's the same way with ballplayers.'" "That sounds reasonable to me," said Tweaty. "Me, too," said Queen Ozma. "I certainly don't wear the same clothes to a meeting with a foreign dignitary as I would wear while playing marbles with Jellia Jamb." "Certainly not!" agreed Nibbles. "If only my father had thought that way," sighed Rube's shadow. "But he just scoffed. 'Do ballplayers get paid?' he'd ask. "'Yes,' I told him. 'They get paid.' "'I don't believe it!' he would rant. "And 'round and 'round we would go. We'd actually have that same argument, almost always word-for-word, at least once a week. Twice a week in the summer. Sometimes my grandfather--my father's father--would get involved in it. My grandfather was a nice man who liked baseball, and he would usually take my side. "'Listen,' he'd say to my father, 'when you were a youngster, I wanted you to be something, too. I wanted you to be a stonecutter, same as I was when I came over from the old country.' Oh, did I mention before that my grandfather was a stonecutter?" "No," replied Elephant. "You just said that he was a nice man who liked baseball." "Okay," said Rube's shadow. "Well, my grandfather had been a stonecutter, and had tried to persuade Dad to become one, too. 'But no!' he would say loudly into my father's ear, 'You wouldn't listen. You wanted to be an engineer. So you _became_ an engineer. And a darned good one, too. Had I forced you into masonry, you would never have excelled in the craft for which you had no love. And you would have been very unhappy. Now Richard wants to be a baseball player. He's so determined that nothing is going to stop him. Let's give him a chance and see what he can do. Don't force the boy to give up on his dreams.'" "Your grandfather sounds like a wise man to me," said Ozma. "He was," said the shadow. "But Dad would never listen. 'Ballplayers are no good,' he'd insist. 'Ballplayers are no good, and they never will be any good.' It was very frustrating. He would usually end the argument by slamming the door and going outside to sit on the porch. And he would stop speaking to my grandfather or me for hours at a time." "That's too bad," said Tweaty. "If you were good at baseball, you should have stuck with it." "But I did stick with it," replied the shadow. "I told you, I just came from a game." "Oh, yeah," said Tweaty. "So you mean you brought your Dad around?"