Big Tom told him he was making a mistake and appealed for confirmation to Pattern who had joined them. Pattern laughed. “Twenty dollars, you say? What sort of a team is it, Maynard?”
“It’s a corking good team, that’s what sort——”
“I mean is it professional? Or semi or what?”
“Why, I guess it’s a professional team. Sure it is. They play in the Central City League.”
“I see. Well, I’d advise this fellow to keep out of it then. He’d be wasting his time with a bunch of pikers like that.” Pattern turned from Big Tom’s indignant countenance to Wayne. “When you think you’d like to play ball for a living, you tackle the manager of a real team. Tell him you want a try-out. He will give it to you if he’s any good. If he isn’t you don’t want to join him. These two-by-twice ball teams don’t get you anything but a lot of hard work and you can stay in one of them until you’re gray-headed without doing any better for yourself. I played with one of them one summer and I know something about them. When you aim, aim high. It pays.”
“I wasn’t thinking of aiming at all,” said Wayne. “I don’t reckon I could play baseball good enough for a real team.”
“Maybe you could and maybe you couldn’t,” replied Pattern. “Anyway, don’t throw up a good job on the off-chance of becoming a Ty Cobb or a Baker.”
Big Tom took himself off, disgruntled and grumbling, and Pattern swung himself to the platform at Wayne’s side. “How old are you?” he asked, and raised his eyebrows when Wayne told him seventeen. “I’d have thought you were eighteen, anyway,” he said. “Played much?”
“I played four years at home,” answered Wayne, “on my school team. And one summer with a team we got up in our town.”