Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1917-02-13
CONFERENCES VITAL TO GAME
TO BEGIN TODAY IN NEW YORK
Both Big Leagues and National Commission
to Hold Meetings-No Drastic Changes
Rules Expected.

York meeting, announced he expected
| to consummate one of the biggest deals
! in the history of the game. He is said
| to be figuring on getting Johnny Evers
and Grover Alexander 1t costs Weegh-
| man nothing to figure, and the adver-
Using he gets out of these big projected
| deals does not hurt the attendance at
! the Cubs grounds. 1t is not impossi-
BILE for him to land Evers. Johnny is
said to be willing to leave Boston. He
likes Chicago. and is popular with the
Windy city fans. but as for Alexander
there's no chance.
1t is pretty generally agreed that the
base ball strike is n fizzle. and that
Dave Fultz is failure as leader for
the players. The question of why FultZ
has failed Is answered convincingly by
Capt. Huston. one of the owners of the
New York Americans. Huston says:
"Fultz failed because he always could
see only one side of the question. lie
does not consider the welfare of the
game, only of the players. He could
have been n valuable man in his posi-
ton. and could have had every club
owner for a friend had he been able
to see that a club owner also had certain
rights. Did he ever do anything con-
structive? Did he ever try to stir up the
players so they would get more in the
game? Every one knows the letharsic
playing during the Federal League
war. Did FultZ ever go around the
parks and watch what was going on?
He is a former player. and certainly
could have seen things which were OBJ
vious to laymen.
Can you imagine what friend Fultz
would have become to the club owners
had he gone to just one of his members
and said: 1T looked to me as though
there might have been more hustiing
on your part out there today"
Players have been expelled from the
fraternity for signing contracts. Has
any one ever heard of player ike
Caldwell being suspended or expelled
from the fraternity? Suppose. when
Caldwell had been suspended by the
club, he had also been suspended by
the fraternity until he proved his
worthiness to belong to such an or
ganization. Would not that have
brought sufficient moral pressure on the
player to prevent a repetition?
Then there was the case of sweeney,
one of Fultz's vice presidents Every
one knows about Sweeney's case-how
he inherited an eight-thousand-doil
contract with two years to run. owing
to this players Indifferent playing. We
were obliged to let him out to minor
league clubs for the last two seasons
and pay most of his salary. Every
effort made by this club to buy Swee-
ney's contract was blocked by sweeney
on Fultz's advice. Outside of the abso-
lutte legal phase of this case: was it
morally just that we should pay
player $4,000 small fortune-for
playing two years in the minors
Then another thing Fultz might have
done was to encourage older players to
teach the young men coming In some
of the finer points of the game. That
would have been real fraternalism.
believe there are lots of young players
who come up every year who might
amount to something if some of the
older fellows would take them aside
and give them a word of encourage
ment or friendly advice, pointing out
defects that the manager might not no.
tice, and tell how to overcome them.
Do you ever see anything like that IN
the fraternity"