"Second Base Sloan" by Christy Mathewson is a delightful baseball novel that transports readers to the diamond for an immersive sports experience. Mathewson, a renowned pitcher himself, brings authenticity to the narrative as he tells the story of Fred Sloan's journey from a small-town player to a big league sensation. The book captures the spirit of baseball's golden era, its camaraderie, and the thrill of competition. With vivid descriptions of games and characters, Mathewson creates a compelling narrative that will appeal to both avid baseball fans and those looking for an engaging story of determination and success on the baseball field.

Excerpt from Second Base Sloan Two boys and a dog sat at the edge of a little wood and shiveringly watched the eastern sky pale from inky blue to gray. One of the boys was white and the other was black; and the dog was yellow. The white boy was seventeen years old, the black boy sixteen, and the yellow dog - well, no one knew just how old he was. The white boy's name was Wayne Torrence Sloan, the black boy's name was Junius Brutus Bartow Tasker, and the dog's name was Sam. An hour ago they had been rudely awakened from their sleep in a box car and more rudely driven forth into cold and darkness and mystery. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The word ain't is used by speakers of all dialects and sociolects of English. Nonetheless, language critics view ain't as marking speakers as ""lazy"" or ""stupid""; and the educated assume ain't is on its deathbed, used only in clichés. Everyone has an opinion about ain't. Even the grammar-checker in Microsoft Word flags every ain't with a red underscore. But why? Over the past 100 years, only a few articles and sections of books have reviewed the history of ain't or discussed it in dialect cont ...