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BALLING THE JACK
FRANK BALDWIN
Harper
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in the USA by Simon & Schuster 1997
Published in paperback by HarperCollinsPublishers in 1997
Copyright © Frank Baldwin 1997
Frank Baldwin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780006499770
Ebook Edition © MAY 2016 ISBN: 9780008191474
Version: 2016-05-09
FOR LORA
I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.
—Ernest Nomingway, The Sun Also Rises
Balling the Jack (slang)–To risk everything on one attempt or effort.
CONTENTS
LET ME tell you about the bets.
I work as a paralegal in a Wall Street firm. Every Friday morning they pay me $447 and every Friday night I bet four hundred of it on a ball game. If I lose, I go the next week on the rims. But if I win—and I win a lot—I take on the town.
Here’s the system: All week I mull over the matchups, and by Friday one or two start feeling like winners. Friday after work I buy a Foster’s Oil Can at the deli across the street and start the long walk up the East Side to Adam’s Curse, my home bar, where my bookie Toadie waits on his stool. I go over the games, weigh the angles.