The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1910-06-30

against this reduction of salaries, or
ganized a rival league, and salaries
leaped to five times that figure, bring
ing disaster upon every one con-
cerned
The restoration of peace reduced
salaries again, but they increased
steadily during the next ten-year
period, as the game grew In popu-
larity and returned large financial re-
ceipts. The National league had in
augurated another salary reducing
campaign In 1899, which ended abrupt
ly when the American league invaded
the field and sent salaries to a war
time footing again by bidding for
players. At the restoration of peace
salaries had reached so high a figure
that baseball offered a chance of quick
riches to a high class of youths who
| speedily enlisted. Salaries fell after
the peace pact, but have continued to
! increase steadily and healthily to the
present time.
The establishment of two major
leagues of equal or nearly equal cali
ber Immediately doubled the demand
for first.class players, and developed
the fact that, with perhaps 100000
active players in the minor leagues,
| college, semiprofessional and strong
amateur teams, II was extremely diff
| icult to find 325 men good enough,
and with experience enough, to fill the
sixteen clubs Of the two major
| leagues.
The finding and developing Of play.
ers 10 the greatest problem of the
modern game. There is a dearth of
really good players; men of brains,
speed and strength, GOODNESS and char
acter. II is almost impossible to pur-
chase players of worth, but outside of
all monetary considerations II is GER
tain that the manager of a weak ma
ior league club cannot, even If given
his choice of all the players in Ameri-
ca outside the major leagues, get to-
| gether a team good enough to raise
his city into the first division unless
| phenomenal luck attends his efforts
and a half a dozen players develop
suddenly after being promoted.
Sometimes players are found in
coveys, like quail Hornellsville,
N. Y. once gave to the major leagues
six players in one year. Lowe, Long,
Camel and Bennett went from one
team into fast company. There was a
team which at one time represented
Franklin, Pa, in the Iron and Oil
league which, without making any
spectacular showing in that humble
organization, proved a gold mine. In
one season that team developed and
sent into the major league Jimmy
Slagle, Claude Ritchey, Emmett Held
rick, Bill Taylor, "Sox" Seybold and
Nichols, the Pittsburg left-handed
| pitcher, every one of whom at once
sprang into prominence and most of
whom afterwards came to be regarded
as famous players.
In the fall of 1909 Connie Mack,
finding his all star Philadelphia Ath-
letics decaying rapidly and threaten
ing to become a hopelessly slow club,
discarded practically his entire team,
and starting afresh to build a new
club, retaining only a few OF the vet
| Grams to balance the new men and
teach them the tricks of the trade,
| had the phenome nal luck to develop
team which came near being OF
! championship caliber. He discovered
Collins, whose infield play was the
sensation of the American league in
| 1909, and Krause, a left-hander who
stepped directly into the front rank Of
the pitchers of the country. Besides
these he found several men better
than those he had cast OF. But such
records are freaks. Usually when
team passes It's prime and begins to
retrograde, years are required-years
and fortunes-before another winning
team is produced.
In the earlier days of the game play.
ers usually came In pairs. a pitcher
and a catcher together; and were
mainly recruited from cities. The rea-
son for this was that they started
together, throwing and catching back
of the shop during the noon-hour re-
cess.
The supply of players OF major
league caliber is so small that the own.
ers of clubs In the American and Ma
tional leagues, and the higher minor
leagues have resorted TO dragnet
methods TO discover them and to pull
them from the back lots, the college
fields and the country Fairgrounds.
Each club employs a scouting force.
usually composed of veteran players
or retired owners. The duty of these
scouts is to scour the entire country,
league after league, club after club.
seeking men who by their playing
show promise. or who by their actions
or hitting ability give signs of future
development.
The extent to which this scrutiny of
players is INDUCED In by the owners
and managers of major league clubs
is almost unbelievable. Barney Drey-
fuss, owner of the Pittsburg club, has
books in his Offices in which are re-
corded the names, addresses, descrip-
tions, batting and fielding averages.
character and general makeup of thou
sands of players of whom the baseball
world never has heard and nrohahlV