Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-01-06

their pleasure-seeing that they are crabs
to inoculate all of their fellow players with
the crab virus. When they have succeed
ed in starting something in a CLUB they
are happy. -,
things that these garrulouS crabs can ma
to kick about and to attempt TO get an Oh
the rest of the players to KICK ABOUT one
doesn't know where TO peslh W me-,
the list of grouches these crabs can develop
in the course of a season. Every little oiu
thing they can pick up to make cha"
about Is magnified a hundred-fold- some
of them don't like the way tleii eoir 60,
read, and this is an excellent reason-tor
them-to start all the rest off with grouch
over the way all of the contracts read.
The Kicking Crabs.
Then these kicking crabs-they are very
much like those sea lawyers of the foe sic
who put in all of their watch below
stirring I'D strife with the crew for ard
begin on the growl that the management
of the club they are attached to is "stingy
That's one of ,le SWEETEST accusations or
the kicking crabs-the alleged stlnginess
NJ the MANAGEMENT. The management Is
NOT only sttngy as to the salaries paid the
PLAYERS, but stingy in everything else;
stngy in the money 1t wants 10 Jay OUT
| for hotel accommodations ior sIeepins
cars for this, that and the other II lsh
so hard for a crabby ball player to get
this one going either. for 1t is curious
thing that nearly all ball players are nat
urally extremely suspicious men ana tneIf
suspicion is pretty apt to take the 1orm'
once the suggestion is started by crap,
| that they are getting the worst OF II at
| the hands of the club for which they are
playing. The business manager OF TN. the pa. pan,
cluh who travels with the club all the time
is generally the man who feels the results
of the agitation started by the CLUB crap as
70 the managementS stlnglneSs. IL the
| business manager Is a Weakiins VINO WIN
stand for crabs of that kind and sag under
them he is pretty likely to have a mlser-
able time of it. IT, on the other hand, he s
a pretty choppy sort of an lndiVldual MINI
and his employers end he can set his hard
heel down right from the jump on that
kind of knocking and thereby force the
club crab to pick up some other KIND OF a
hammer There some ball players
the least important ones, as RUE, at
that-who mutter like so many brooding
sea gulls when they can't have lower
berth in the sleeper every time tney take
to the cars They're not even willing to
draw straws for the lowers-they want EN-
out of hand, whether the others are more
entitled to them or not, and that's all there
Is to 1t. If they can't get lower perm erin
every trip they howl and bawl around and
make cracks about the stnginess of the
club management and make blltherlng
nuisances of themselves in general. When
they travel by steamboat, as they do be-
tween Boston and New York and Detroit
and Cleveland, they've infallibly got loud
Shrek a-coming about the situation OF their
cabin and do all they know how to get all
the rest of the outfit dissatisfied with the
cabin locations.
"Grouch" Over Their Food.
They never, by an chance, in any city or
at any hotel, get a solitary, single thing
that is fit to eat do these club crabs. Ball
clubs stop at the very best hotels and 1t
is really an odd thing that the food at the
best American hotels is so utterly unfit to
eat; but, to listen to these club crabs II
really must be something awful, American
hotel fodder You glance around dining
room in which a ball club is eating and you
see wealthy men and women taking keen
enjoyment in the food served to them
people who have been used to dainty and
finely-prepared food all of their lives, at
that And then you hear the club crab
exclaiming that the grub at that hotel is
rotten and punk and ION the fritz"
and very much Keokuk" and you won
der. so you do. If the club crab would
only content himself with arriving at the
mental conclusion that the hotel grub is
rotten and let 1t go at that wouldn't
be SO bad. But he invariably exudes his
raps about the grub in loud, plaintive
tone and in the end he succeeds in con-
yincing at least part Of the outfit that he
is right, that the food really Is bad. Such
is the power Of example and Of constant
DINING on topic.
It cannot truthfully be said at that, that
the majority of ball players are men who.
from their childhood. have been reared on
the daintiest imaginable kind OF food Yst