The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-01-26
ANY OLD LEAGUE
 IS GOOD IF IT'S
 FURNISHING DOUGH
Big Tom Crook Says That the Old Bread and Butter AL
 ways Tastes Good

Tom Crooks first game with Bridge port on his return to the Nutmeg league last season was on the Holyoke grounds. He didn't like the way the umpire was running things and shout the the country, s V bel believe me- How do you know" piped home player LAW, I have tincannfd through the most of them. and t4ke it from me, it's got all the. other bush circuits beaten to frazzle." Well, you're playing in t and mighty glad glad to h,n, have at all my friend. sThe old bread and butter stuff tastes the same no mat ter what league your getting it out ef,'' was Toms philosophical rejoin- der.-springfleld Union.
 Manager Jack Teller of the Ponies was in Albany yesterday in attend- meeting with the intent to pull off g few deals with some of the New York managers
 Gil Edwards of Northampton and his manager Bill Luby were also in attendance at the New York meeting. It is said that Edwards would try to secure few players. but it does look as if he was looking for a pur- chaser for his franchise, That's about ali he was doing at the State league meeting held in Hartford recently.
 "Eive out of every ten fans are of the opinion that errors play the lead ing role in sending young ball players back to the bushes, but they imagine wrong" says western expert. "Ef- TOTS certainly receive consideration, but in the category of the veteran manager errors are at the bottom of the list when the worth of ball play CTS Is being summed up.
 "Ball players who do not make err TOTS are not worth their weight in sawdust. It is the player who shirks chances who keeps his correct or near correct fielding average. Which is the best man-the chap who digs over back of third frantically. smothers a hard hit ball which he gets to with both hands so that an error is charg- reaches first, or the player who makes a half-hearted dash and then lets the ball skinner to left field while the batsman romps to second base?
 Herman Long, one of the greatest shortseps of all time, made more err TOTS each season than half of the other league shortfieiders, but his su- periority over them was never aues- toned.
 .1Big league managers today want players whose nerve is in the right place and who aren't considering what the official scorer will charge them up with every time they have hard chance. It is the player who can be depended upon to fight every minute and who goes after every ball hit within mile of him that sticks in the big show, even though he makes errors galore"
 s"Tip" O'Neil, president of the Vest ern league. has a novel idea of how the umpires should be trained for their early work. O'Neill's proposi- ton is to have a board placed just back of the home plate and just it's width, with a pitcher sending in the ball and the umpire standing directly back of the board in this way getting a perfect line on the balls that might curve or shoot wide of the IS inches of base,
 O'Neill would judge an umpire's ability to handle the ball players by the way the official might wag his thumb "Just let me see an umpire twist his thumb once or twice" says O,Neill "and I will tell you about his ability to handle ball players"