The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1896-07-22
CAYLOR'S BALL GOSSIP.
BellicOse BasebaIlist Learns an
Important Lesson.
A BITTER PILL FOB TEBEAU.
Busie's Vague Plan for Vengeance
Reasonable Talk Among Minor
Leagues-Eforts for an oppo-
sition Circuit.

Pugnacity has been for some time past
growing and spreading in the baseball
Eekd. Lately it became almost an epidem-
&c. AS We have seen, the ''neble rage" even
swept the level headed veteran Captain
Arson from his feet, and he wanted to
whip the Cincinnati catcher in the presence
of 10, 900 worshipful and reverent Sunday
rooters. Then came the news that Umpire
Lynch and Captain Tebeau agreed, in the
midst of game at Cleveland, to go out
side the ground and settle dispute over
and were only prevented by the fnteE4sr-
snce of more conservative players.
But the fighting mania didn t end there
Those aggressive Cleveland Spiders went
to Louisville, and the state of belligerency
was recognized. Mr.. Tebeau and some Of
his warriors had a skirmish with Umpire
Weidman because he called game on &C
count Of darkness just when they had vic
tory in their clasp. The president of the
Louisville club entered the controversy at
this stage by causing the arrest Of Tebeau
and some of his players and arraigning
them on a charge of disturbing the peace
and melting to riot. The Louisville magls-
trate, who is probably baseball crank,
recollecting that his favorite club has had
few chances this season to humiliate visit
ing teams and uphold the pride and dig
nifty Of the commonwealth, came TO its res
cue and assessed fines upon the Ohio IN
7aders, graded downward from $500 to $40
in order to fit the specific crime in each
case.
Still, the end was not reached When I
was boy and went to school in the coun-
try, it was the custom among the Spartan
like fathers of that day when boy got
whipping at school to administer to the
victim of pedagogic wrath a second chas-
tisement as soon as the unhappy youth re-
turned to the sacred precincts Of his home,
and the second bastinado did not result
from IN Investigation Of the merits of the
first, but as a matter OF course sequence.
The National league seems to have adopted
that old fashioned way of dealing with its
erring sons, for right on top of the judi
cial fines imposed at Louisville comes an
edict from the National league board Of di-
rectors adding $500 to the sum of Captain
Tebeau's financial punishment with the
provision shat unless it be paid into the
League treasury within ten days after nOti-
flcation he shall be ineligible to play until
the fine is liquidated.
There can be no doubt that Tebeau is
too extensively aggressive upon the ball
field. He has gone just bit too far in urg-
ing his men to scrap and claim all in
sight. Perhaps it is the manner in which
he does this more than the persistency
with which he keeps it up which has final
ly called down on his luckless head the
punishment Of Kentucky courts and the
League directors. Once before compared
Tebeau to DR.. Jekyn and Mr.. Hyde.
His private and baseball natures are an
tithetical twins. In everyday life Tebeau
is a mild hammered, sociable, agreeable
young man, who wins friends wherever he
goes. But the ballfield transforms him
into an entirely different person. He
knows no friends there. The world is his
foe, and his hand is raised against the uni
verse. No close decision by an umpire is in
his mind fair, honest or right unless it IA
vors his club. And his policy is to de-
nounce the official in words which seethe as
well as to heap Opprobrium upon the
players of the opposing side.
What result .this official recognition by
the League of MIR. Tebeau's peculiar meth
DDS will have cannot be definitely foretold-
1t is likely, however, to be ehicaciOus, not
only in it's direct application, but as eau
ton to many others who were studying the
Tebeaunian methods and following most
dangerously close to his lines. True, Mr..
Robinson, who owns the Cleveland club,
hurled defiance at the League directors
and in the first moments of his resentment
declared that the fine would not be paid,
and that Mr. Tebeau would play right
along as usual 1t is well that he had ten
days in which to cool off and simmer down
to a proper appreciation of the situation.
The decision Of the National league di-
rectors in the Rusie case as made at Pitts
burg, is consistent with all the past policy
of that body, which has invariably stood
solidly with its clubs for the maintenance
of discipline Without the strongest kind
Of discipline in the teams baseball would
lose public confidence and as a conse-