Evening star., 1914-01-23
|EBBETS IS HOPEFUL
Still Confident Tinker Will Wear
Brooklyn Uniform.
SEES DOOM OF FEDERALs S
Alleges Bad Circuit, Cheap Admis.
sions. Poor Plants and Timid
Backers.

NEW YORK, January .3.-Charles II.
Ebbets. president OF the Brooklyn Su-
perbas. returned home yesterday after
i,.00-milc trip, still confident in the
belief that Joe Tinker, the recalcitrant
shortstop. would be seen in a Brooklyn
uniform next summer.
Mr.. Ebbets spent the greater part of the
day resting, and expects to have little to
occupy his time until tomorrow. when
Wflbert Robinson will come up from Bal
timore to talk over plans for the spring
training trip.
According to the Brooklyn president.
Tinker did not seek an interview, but one
was suggested by mutual friend whi
Ebbets was in Kansas City. He lost
little time in going to Chicago and hunt
ing up the erstwhile manager of the
Reds, whose actions in the last month
have been watched with greater interest
than the career of Halley's comet a
couple of years ago. Mr.. Ebbets said.
Tinker has really signed with the Fed
erals. ! offered him exact y the salary l
had offered him before he hoped. and,
OF course. he would get the $4,000 bonus
We promised him when we bought him
from Cincinnati. Our interview WIS
p easant, but Tinker did not agree to
jump, and we parted good friends.
Says Tinker Will Stick.
Il repeat that I believe Tinker will be
with Brooklyn, because l think the Fed
eral League cannot last, and therefore
there will be no Federal club with which
Tinker can play. The Federal League
looks doomed to ME for four principal
reasons, although there arc many others
The four are:
The circuit includes Toronto. Balti-
more, Indianapolis and Kansas City, four
minor league cities. Second, while It
pretends to be a major league the Fed
erals cannot charge more than minor
league prices if they are to compete in
those four cities with the International
League and American Association clubs.
Third, the Federal League has naught
but minor league plants, and in this day
| unless your playing superiority is over
whelming you cannot expect patronage
at minor league park in competition with
the half million or million dollar parks in
the majors And it would be a physical
impossibility for the Federal League
i, cities to build major plants, no mattes
! how much money they had, before next
season Fourth. 1 am confident the CAPT
talists behind the Federal League will
| get cold feet wnen they begin to under
/ stand the enormous sums they must ad-
| ton
| The president of the Superbas said
| that he had signed sixteen players de-
! spite ti,e fact that the Federal League
manage rs had approached nearly every
man on the Brooklyn list He said that
! he thought the players of this day and
/ generation were too wise to be lured
| away by stories of buried gold and treas
! ure trove at the end of rainbOws.
HTau rropsfar Club
Mr.. Ebbets said it was not at all i'm
probable that the International League
might transfer a franchise to Brooklyn
in order to provide continuous base ball
| for Brooklyn fans, and added:
(; al should approve Of the move as a
war measure, but hardly think the time
is ripe for such an innovation as u per-
manent thing. There are innumerable
! angles to the proposition that only a
/ base ball man would know.
| IF the Federals do not blow up, as l
! believe they will. We shall take every
/ measure to protect ourselves and will
| not let pride stand in our way.
! Some of the preliminary plans for the
spring work of the Superbas that Ebpets
/ brought back from the west, following
/ his conferences with Robinson: The new
manager plans to have Nap Rucker. Ed
| Reufbach. Pat Ragon Tex Erwin and
| Otto Miller report at Hot SPRINGS Feb
ruary 10.
| Four Gays later Robinson will open
! camp at Augusta for the recruit pitch
j ers, and March l the entire team will