Phoenix tribune., 1921-02-26
PREPARING TO PLAY BALL
A Winter Noisy With Debates Will
Soon Yield to the Sprinetime
Music Of Crashing Bats on
Southern Drill Grounds
By w. O. McGEEHAN

been trlIle more EorOSc and moody
than usual The shadow of the
worlds series scandal of 1919 left
considerable gloom and chill Judge
Kenesaw Mountain Lands, who ac-
cepted the place of baseball dictator,
has insisted upon being a real dicta-
tor, which has still further depressed
the old line magnates.
The winter gatherings of the mag
mates, which used to be mostly wassail
and merriment, have this season been
sober and somber Not a glass
broken and not a chair thrown one
scout reports. It was, in fact, the
first real Volstead gathering of club
owners, this joint meeting at Chicago
where the new national agreement
was signed
1t is a more or less wordy document,
but the, substance of it is that Judge
Lands is to purify professional base
ball and to keep it pure. 1t is ad-
nitted that the old control of the
game was Bind and incompetent
Judge Landis has some job on his
hands because when the old line
magnates have recovered from their
fright at the thought of empty base
ball parks, they will throw up all
sorts of bart'ed wire entanglements in
the way of the Judge. They will try
to make his administration a failure
and get a clamor started for the
restoration of the control of baseball
into the hands of practical baseball
men,
Still another scare has been thrown
into the magnates. A person by the
name of Lawson started a new league,
an outlaw league. With the first an
nouncement the magnates, who recall
the attempts of the Words, the Sim
clairs and others to start the Federal
league, turned pale. But when it was
announced that Mr. Lawson would
have two negro teams in his league
the terror passed. That seemed to
imply no serious opposition to big
league baseball. While the Senegam-
bian has made his mark in the pro-
fessional boxing game, fer some rea-
son or other the great American game
has not been opened up to him.
Once John ]. McCraw. manager of
the Giants, was contemplating signing
a colored pitcher who might have
turned out to bea second Rube Wad-
dell. for he was a left handler. Mr..
McGraw planned to pass him off as a
Cuban, but ne was a trifle too dark,
and the idea was abandoned, though
Mr.. McGraw still is of the opinion
that he might have won a pennant for
the Giants that particular year.
But the general depression of this
winter of tasebalrs discomfort is due
to pass very suddenly On or about
the first of March the teams will start
fitting to the south and to the south
west, and Immediately thereafter
there will emanate the only sort Of
baseball talk that interests the read
ers of sporting pages. Try as the fan
will. he cannot rouse much interest in
what the club owners do or think
always supposing that club owners
think.
The meetings of the magnates are
meetings of business men, and there
is not much romance or glamour at
tached to what business men do or
say. What is an item concerning the
annexing of another million or so
compared to the announcement that
Babe Ruth has just poled one out of
the park a trifle further than the last
one?
Let US first consider the Babe and
the prospects for him in the season
that is to come. The last l saw of
him he was fitting south already with
one of his owners. Colonel T. L. Hus-
ton, late of the 10th U. S. Engineers.
He was carrying a longbarreled pump
gun and was on his way to slay ducks
at Dover Hall, the Georgia shooting
club which is maintained by num-
Der of baseball magnates.
The Babe spent part of his winter
in Cuba and, they say, quite a part of
his earnings of the last season and
also such money as he might have
gathered playing winter baseball in
the hundred-proof island. The Bale
tried to fathom the eccentricities of
the horses and did not succeed.
Abandoning the bat for the dope
sheet, he struck out, for no simple,
hit-them-out batter can fathom the
curves of the race track.
The first and foremost proelem for
the season to come is, how many
home runs will the Babe pole out this