The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-05-31
SPORTOGRAPHY

The Thigh cost of living may serve
 as a. partial excuse for the exorbitant financial demands of the present crop, of boxers, but the true friends of the game would like to see the fighters
 manifest little more of the sporting spirit and little less commercialisrn. In the old days real world champions were satisfied with smaller purses
 than are now demanded by third-rate has-beens or never-will-bes. As an
 example, there was the Paddy Ryan
 Joe Goss battle for the heavyweight
 championship of the world, which
 was pulled off at Collier Station, W.
 Va, ssjustA thirty three years ago yes terday, May 30, 1880. It was fought
 out with bare knuckles and went eighty-seven rounds before Ryan won the victory and the title. There prob
 ably isn't heavyweight living today who would go through such an ordeal
 for less than fifty thousand dollars and you can't blame them a great deal, at that. Yet Ryan cleaned up
 less than $25O for his hard-won vic tory. Nobody wants to revive the
 bare-fist game. and it is to the credit of present day fans that they have no desire for such long and gruelling ex- hibftions. At the same time, a little of the love of sport and sterling hon l esty of those old g1adiators would work a decided improvement in the OOACAS OA IOOoys Ilydn s case was by
 no means exceptional. t'NonpareiI Jack'' Dempsey cleared only $10 or so
 from one of his hardest battles Heen-
 an made a trip to England to fight Savers for the championship of the world for a thousand dollars, out of
 which he had to pay expenses. Sulli- van received much less than that for
 whipping Ryan in Mississippi.
 Reuben Oldring, who plays in the garden for the Philadelphia Athletics was born in New York twenty-nine years ago yesterday. "Rube'' com
 menced his baseball career as a semi pro in the Bronx and in Hoboken, which makes his front monaker pecu- l1arly apropos. His first league ex- perfence was with Montgomery, in the Southern circuit Toward the close of
 the 1905 season he returned to his native city and played for a time with
 the Yankees The Athletics had a prior claim, however, and OIdring was 1 awarded to Philadelphia by the na-
 tional commission. Rube is speedy | and is one of the hardest swinging
 hitters in the pastime.
 There is an old tradition that the | standing of baseball clubs on the last
 day of May determines their standing l at the finish. Nor is this tradition. which makes today the day of fate, | without a basis of fact, for a search 1 of the records proves that in a naie~-
 1ty of cases the teams entered in pen
 nant chases have found their logical places in the championship race and settled into their paces-oh, goodness gracious, will nobody stop muh be
 fore the merry month of May has
 melted, so to speak, into juvenescent June. There are exceptions to all rules, of course, but, other things be- ing equal. or thereabouts. the last of i May dope holds good. However, it
 may be just as we'll for the various
 leagues to play out the remainder of
 their schedules, and see what.
 The longest professional baseball game in the record book was played | four years ago today, at Bloomington, Ill.,, when the local club of the Three
 I League defeated Decatur in twenty
 six innings by a score of to 1. A | little later in the same year this rec i ord was duplicated when Dixon, H., l defeated Muscatine, Ia., in the same number of innings, the final score be- | ing to 2. These records supp1anted | the twenty-five inning record made in 8 game between Grand Forks and l Fargo, N. D., which had stood since 1891. The longest major league game l ever played was in 1909, when the l Philadelphia Athletics defeated the l Boston Red Sox. to 1, in twenty-four ] innings. The longest contest on rec l ord, however, was played by amateurs l ten years ago, when the Brooklyn Athletic Club defeated the East End All Stars at Cleveland, O., to 1, in
 thirty innings. The record for the I shortest baseball game of nine fLl I innings belongs to the Southern League, and was established in 1910,
 when Atlanta took just thirty-tYo