and it belonged to the snoox and the gringo and they only rented it to him 164for the championship game. The last I saw of him he was hot-footing it pitty-pat pitty-pat up the street with the package.

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“Well, I just said tra-la-loo to Butter Fingers when along comes another ballplayer. He had a package too, and he said his name was Three Strikes, and he was the left-handed southpaw pitcher for the Hot Grounders team the day before playing a game against the Grand Stand team. He said he knew unless he put over some classy pitching the game was lost and everything was goose eggs. So he came to the Village of Cream Puffs the day before the game, found a snoox and a gringo and got the snoox and the gringo to make him a spitball shirt. A spitball looks easy, he told me, but it has smoke and whiskers and nobody can touch it. He said he handed the Grand Standers a line of inshoots close to their chins and they never got to first base. Three Strikes was carrying a package and he said the spitball 165shirt was in the package, and he was taking it back to the snoox and the gringo because he promised he wouldn’t keep it and it belonged to the snoox and the gringo and they only rented it to him. The last I saw of him he was hot-footing it pitty-pat pitty-pat up the street with a package.”

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The gang of cub ballplayers in the Cigar Store asked the Night Policeman, “Who won the game? Was it the Grand Standers or the Hot Grounders took the gravvy?”

“You can search me for the answer,” he told the boys. “If the snoox and the gringo come past the postoffice to-night when I sit on the front steps wondering how so many letters get lost and how so many never get answered, I will ask the snoox and the gringo and if they tell me to-night I’ll tell you to-morrow night.”

And ever since then when they talk ball talk in the ball towns hiding in the tall grass they 166say the only sure way to win a ball game is to have a pitcher with a spitball shirt and over that a home run shirt, both made by a snoox and a gringo.

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8. Two Stories Out of Oklahoma and Nebraska.

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