Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-10-16
Flood of Wrath
Threatens Club Owners
Who Purchase Penndnf
Six Major League Owners Want to Curb Whole
sale Exchanges of Talent; Players Wrlthe
Under Bondage.

but ever with added strength the
Giants could not win.
Again in 1920 the contents of the
excheouer was lavished upon the land.
It brought no championship but it made
the mace too hot for some of the 9th
ers. In 1921 success crowned the
spreading of kale, and in 1922 1t won
another opportunity to play for the
grand stakes. Contemporaneously with
this method Of getting there, another
club pursued the same policy with
much the same results.
Ont where the 81 admissions do not
grow as thickly on the bushes as they
do in the east some owners were OPP
Grating on the o~ld-fashioned doctrine
and the good sporting platforms which
called for matching of wits against
| wits. They succeeded after a fashion
but their patrons objected and asked
whether the national game was a SIM
| pie question like buying eggs and butter
or really was a game in which personal
skill and personal mentality counted
for something against the jingle of the
coin on the table.
The players wanted to know some
| thing about it. They never had been
consulted since basbell had drifted by
easy stages into the selling of a mans
labor at auction, and as more and more
of them went to the larger colleges of
the country their opinions changed
upon the right of a company to hitch
| them UP to a contract which ran to
perpetuity.
That is one reason why a baseball
| players union is at hand whether the
owners recognize it or not. 1t was
! said that n commissioner of baseball
had been appointed to see that the
player received justice but the players
think the commissioner of baseball has
forgotten. Anyhow they did not ap-
point him. nor did they have anything
to do with the appointment. Some of
them go so far as to say that they
can't see the slightest necessity for
the commissioner of baseball, especially
if they pay him a salary of $4,000.
That's the ball players side of it.
Uncle Tom All Over Again
The ball players have been sold
whether they wished to be sold or not
and they have seen owners make thou
sands of dollars by exchanging them
to other clubs. They got one of the
money and sometimes they did not get
a penny of increase in their salaries,
Yet the fact that they were trans
ferred at such high figures would
seem to be proof that they were SUI
perior players and entitled to an in
crease.
Perhaps any grievances that the
players might hold would not come to
anything were it not for the fact that
some of the club owners feel that
their future is threatened on much tht
same lines as that of the ball players
That is why six owners have agreed
that they viii sanction a rule which
will prohibit the sale of any ball play
er except during the waiver period
! after May Is of the season at hand
Some would prohibit the sale when thu
season starts. 1t would put then
down on q flat basis. each one having
to work out his problem with what h
had at hand, and non of them able t.
draw on the purse strings to recruit
a team at the, last moment and to Ia,
off or get rid of enough deadwood t
bring its standard back to 100 after
had dwindled down to 0.
If the owners of baseball clubs eve
do enter upon such a course 1t Will b
!, the first time the managerial job ha
had a real test in a long time.
Il But the ball players are going evel
further. They are discussing, unde
5 their breath, that they won't be sol
at all unless they receive the none
which is paid for them, less that par
which might be due to the club origi
: nally holding them because of thei
!, bringing up"
| And some of them never wer
brought up. They 'growed' up Xix
z Topsy.