Golnik flapped the air with his right hand.
"Never mind I don't know nothing about the game!" he declared. "Not only I am president of the society, but I am the designer in your place—ain't it? And if you think it's bekovet you are giving this Aleer to Kanef, which he is only a shipping clerk, understand me, I think differencely."
"But what is the honour about being a pitcher?" Eschenbach protested. "There's a whole lot of pitchers which they couldn't sign their names even."
"That's all right, too," Golnik declared. "Might I don't know nothing about this here baseball, Mr. Eschenbach, but I could read in the papers, understand me; and an up-to-date, high-grade pitcher is getting his ten thousand a year yet."
"Schmooes, ten thousand a year!" exclaimed Eschenbach. "What does a pitcher amount to anyway? Supposing a pitcher gets fresh with the umpire, verstehst du mich, and the umpire orders the pitcher he should get off the field, y'understand—he dassent give him no back talk nor nothing. He must got to go, verstehst du, because in baseball the pitcher is nothing and the umpire everything."
"Umpire?" Golnik replied. "What is that—an umpire?"
"The umpire is a kind of a foreman," Eschenbach continued, "only bigger yet—which if you would be umpire, that's an honour; aber a pitcher is nothing."
Here he winked furtively at Louis Birsky.
"And I says to Mr. Birsky only the other day," he went on, "I says, 'We must make the designer the umpire,' I says; 'because such an Aleer really belongs to the designer.' Aber if you are so stuck on being pitcher, understand me, we would make you the pitcher, and the shipping clerk will be the umpire."
Golnik shrugged his shoulders.