The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1922-03-11
BIG LEAGUE BOSSES
SHOULD END THREATS
and HALT BLUFFING
BY FRANK G. MENKE

ny EtANA
Magnates in the big leagues should
cease their threats and halt their
bluffing.
1t Is time for them either to carry
out in entirety every threat made
or apply muffler.
The eXtrayagant statements, the
wild threats which they have been ut
tering, concerning the ball player -
and then their inglorious backdown-
have done an awful lot to wreck the
morale of baseball. and to make jokes
out of the magnates.
Just the other day Garry Hermann
Of the Cincinnati Reds made the state
ment:
Eddie Roush either will play dur
ing 1922 for the salary which we have
offered or he will not play anywhere"
If Hermann went through with
such a threat IT would be great
thing for baseball 1t would bring
about a condition where the ball play
er would know that the club owner
meant business when he issued ulti-
matums. But the pathetic thing is
that the owner rarely makes good on
his threat. The player calls his bluff,
stands pat, and in the end the owner
comedies defeat.
Game Menace
The almost invariable backdown by
the club owner adds annually to the
army of holdouts-and holdouts men
ace the tranquility Of the game.
If few players who are chronic
holdouts were indefinitely suspended
or barred from the game for all time,
| 1t would be lesson for the others
which they never would forget. But
the trouble is that the end of all sal
airy disputes usually finds the owner
captivating or eager to compromise.
There is a sort of free masonry
among ball players: When one, hay
ing been offered $4,000 a year, de-
mands $4,000 and holds out for
while and then has the affair adjusted,
the other players always are curious
as to what actually happened. They
seek him out and they learn that even
though he didn't get all he asked for,
he did succeed in forcing the club
owner to boost the price $4,000 year
or $1,000
And, mind you, that increase in sal
airy came after the club owner, in the
usual club owner fashion, had an
nounced to the world that he would
be eternally hanged before he'd in
crease his original offer by one lead
| jitney"
All Try 1t
When the other players learn how
| the player, via the holdout process,
, succeeded in getting a salary raise of
i from 25 to 40 per cent, they immedi-
ately decide to do likewise the next
season. And they do-and, as usual,
they win out in their tussel over money
matters with the club owner.
| Such an accumulation of defeats of
club owners, by players, in the matter
| of salary battles, naturally has steered
all the players into the idea that If
! they don't get voluntary salary in
crease equal to what they figure they
are worth, they can secure it by the
holdout process.
And so they hold out.
| 1t will be interesting to note devel-
j opments in the Herrman-Rouch case.
Hermann has placed himself on rec
ord as saying that Roush will not get
one dollar beyond the original offer of
the Reds. He has put it to Roush
to accept that proposition or to be ban
lished permanently from baseball.
Will Be Influence
/ If Roush refuses to take that money
and is barred from the game, it will
serve as future lesson to the noble
athletes. Not SO many will monkey
with the holdout buzz saw in the fu-
ture. But If Roush should, after all,
succeed in forcing Hermann to hoist
his original bid, and discredit Herr
manns ultimatum, then the ball play
ers-all of them-will continue to rea-
son along these lines:
1.-THE way to get more money is to
announce a holdout. Nothing will hap
pen to US but boost in salary, for the
club owner won't suspend us-and, in
the end, they'll always kick in with
some sort of boost"
! Copyright 1921 BY King Features
! Syndicate, Incl
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