Where do you Get that Noise? by Ring Lardner

The trade was pulled wile the Phillies was here first trip. Without knockin' nobody, the two fellas we give was worth about as much as a front foot on Main Street, Belgium. And the fella we got had went better this spring than any time since he broke in. So when the news o' the deal come out I says to Dode, I says:

"What's the matter with Pat -- tradin' Hawley? What's he goin' to do with them two he's gettin' -- make ticket takers out of 'em? What's the idear?"

"It does look like a bad swap for us," says Dode. "Hawley's worth six like them you're givin' us, and he ain't only twenty-seven years old."

"That's what I'm tellin' you," I says. "The deal looks like you was tryin' to help us out."

"We are," says Dode. "Didn't we just get through helpin' you out o' the first division?"

"Save that for the minstrels," I says. "Give me the inside on this business: Is they somethin' the matter with him? The trade's made now already and it won't hurt you none to come clean. Didn't him and Pat get along?"

"Sure! Why not? " says Dode. "Did you ever see a guy that Pat couldn't get along with him?"

"Well then," says I, "what's the answer? Don't keep me in suspenders."

"I ain't sure myself," says Dode, "but I and Bobby was talkin' it over and we figured that Pat just plain got sick o' hearin' him talk."

"Feed that to the goldfish," I says. "If Pat couldn't stand conversation he wouldn't of never lasted this long."

"Conversation, yes," Dode says; "but it's a different thing when a bird makes an argument out of everything that's said. They wasn't a day passed but what Hawley just as good as called everybody on the club a liar. And it didn't make no difference whether you was talkin' to him or not. If I happened to be tellin' you that my sister was the champion chess player o' Peanut County, he'd horn right in and say she wasn't no such a thing; that So-and-So was the champion. And they wouldn't be no use to argue with him because you couldn't even get a draw. He'd say he was born in the county seat o' Peanut County and empired all the chess tournaments there. They wasn't no subject that he didn't know all about it better'n anybody else. They wasn't no town he wasn't born and brought up in. His mother or his old man is first cousins to everybody in the United States. He's been operated on for every disease in the hospital. And if he's did all he says he's did he'll be eight hundred and twenty-two years old next Halloween."

"They's lots o' fellas like that," I says.

"You think so? " says Dode. "You wait a wile. Next time I see you, if you don't say he's all alone in the Argue League I'll give you my bat."

"If he's that good," I says, "he'll be soup for Carey."

"He will at first, maybe," says Dode; "but Carey'll get sick of him, just like Pat and all the rest of us did."