Evening star., 1915-12-17
CARRIGAN DECLARES BOSTON
SOX WILL REMAIN INTACT
Champions Manager 'Ridicules Reports
That He Will Make Changes on
His Team This Winter.

In the year following the winning of a
championship. but the main reason for
that to my mind is that these teams
had reached the top of their form be-
fore that and were really starting to
go back. But this is not the case with
the Red Sox.
Barring Heinie Wagner and myself,
] doubt II there is a man on the team
that has reached his thirtieth year yet.
Gregg may be coming to that point,
but take Hooper, Speaker. Henriksen.
Lewis. Hoblitzell, Janvrin, Gardner and
scott of the regulars, they are well
under that age and capable of playing
championship base bali for long time
yet. Cady and Thomas, not to mention
Haley, are well below the thirty-year
mark. Mays. Ruth. Shore Leonard and
Foster are practically kids, while Col
Inns and Wood have yet to see their
seen that we have not started to go
back yet. in spite of the dreams of
some of these dopesters.
A Regular Habit.
Every now and then some one comes
out with the statement that Larry
Gardner is to be traded. Can you
imagine any club in the American
League that would give US a player
that would be anything like an equal
exchange? Take Gardner day in and
day out, and he is a pretty dependa BILE
third-sacker. The records will show
that his long drives annually put lot
Of games on the winning side for us.
Granted that now and then Gardner
slows up a bit in his fielding, and that
Scott fails to hit as expected. This
is only something that happens in all
great ball clubs. Cobb had a bad bat
ting slump last season; as hard a hit
ter as Crawford Is, he ran for a long
spell without doing anything with his
bat. Slumps overtake every player, for
the strain of a championship season Is
so great that unless break comes
now and then player is apt to go bad
altogether.
There were plenty to criticise Scott
when he failed to do much hitting
during the world series. yet at diff
ferent times during the regular season
he delivered many a timely blow. The
critics didn't yell then. / have seen
and heard Janyrin scored by Boston
fans because of an occasional error or
failure to hit. yet these same people
must have forgotten that it was jan
vrin who won about four of the six
straight defeats that we pinned on
Washington in three days. verybody
was talking about his batting and
fielding in that series, but there were
still plenty to criticise the next time
he failed to make good.
I'm only mentioning this to you to
show that even a world championship
team cannot have everything. II any
one team could have an aggregation Of
the best flelders, the best hitters, the
most effective pitchers and the clever
est base runners in the game base ball
would soon lose its popularity, for the
games would be too one-sided to at
tract the fans.
But this stuff about trades and
swaps, as far as we are concerned,
is all bunk. No team would let any
player come here that might strength
en- us. We could sell or trade lot
of players. but we couldn't get what
we gave for them. So I am willing to
let these dopesters do all their trading
now. All they can do is to make paper
trades. When the time comes Presi-
dent Lannin and myself will look after
whatever shifts they have left for us
| to make"