The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1944-12-01
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

wear Until poor OLD mike, rest his SOUL III peace,
| he dies just before the club went south and
the front office brought in Charlie Dissenat
for manager and he may have been a fair
kind of baseball man except he springs that
old lady of his on us and after that things got
so confused you couldn't find your head with
your hat.
The first thing we know she is hollering how
we are full of reactonary prejudice against
Inc female race and it is just discrimination
that denies them an opportunity to prove that
they can play ball just as good as men and
so we get big, skinny dame with hide like
an alligator bag and jug-handle ears and she
is going to play first base for us because she
is a social pioneer and she violated one of
their old traditions up at Smiths college by
chewing tobacco and wearing swimming suit
Without no top piece. And SO then, the old lady
she decides she is going to pitch one day and
when the game is called for darkness we are
still in the first inning with nobody out and
the score is 296 to 0, Giants.
Well. I don't care, you can take the best
ball club in the history of our great national
game and you can't do yourself justice with
those kind of things going on, although we do
win lot of ball games by using this Professor
Weenle from Harvard for our house umpire
for all our home games and this Boris Pant
zof the Bulgarian economist, so if we are
short say so runs with the game over. Pant
Zoff just borroWs so runs from 1856 or 1875
and charges it to posterity and we win, any,
way. But I was going to tell you about how
9d Vicente, he decides we are being exploited
and SO then he springs some new. Dizzy rules
ard he calls them labor's gain.
Like, for instance, he says with so many
ballplayers out of work we will reduce the
regular working day to four innings and after
that, $50 an inning, overtime, and on Satur-
days, Sundays and holidays you get $500 over
time each inning, of course the regular ball
players they liked this very good when they
first heard the idea but then Vicente and Boris
Pantzoff they start loading the club with funny
looking female professors and youth jerks from
Weenie's thinking academy down in Washing
ten where all they do is sit around and think
up queer ideas and we soon find out they are
getting all the overtime.
Our old crowd, We were so goofy by this
time we wouldn't know what to do in a regular
game of ball but anyway, just from force of
habit, we keep on trying although it wasn't
easy when you have got six bases instead of
four and you can run from left to right if you
want to and everybody has got an assistant
to help you play your position, SO, anyway,
after couple of games playing like this old
Vicente comes into the club house after
noon and he says, (Why you dirty lot Of re-
dictionary, anti-social fnks you killing the
job out there and lousing things up for the
urderprvileged and hereafter anybody who
gets hit, well he is fined $500 because you
are nothing but company stooges for the rich
employers
ESQ hereafter" Vicente said, Il don't want
to even see foul and I want everybody to
take three swings and set down and when you
are playing defense more of this knocking
your brains out crashing into the fence for
long flies but just take it easy"
Wallie Didden was kind of an old timer, so
he said, Well Professor" he said, maybe
you can tell me how We are going to win some
ball games without no hits and nobody going
after nothing in the field so any sinking pop
fly stands for home run for the opposition"
That is just what am trying to get through
you loW-doWn reactionary, rat Scab fink OF
head" Vicente said. ITO hell with the employ-
el class. They can look out for theirself in
stead of the underprivieged workers tearing
their hearts out to make profits SO they can
deck their fat, ignorant wives out in ermines
ard diamond rings Why can't you dumb,
GoWntrodden bumbs get it through your rat,
scab, fink heads that the sooner you get four
innings over the sooner we go into overtime
and lever mind winning because any time we
want to win one, Professor Pantzoff will bor-
rw some runs and charge them to poSterity.
You are a lot of company stooges, and you
have no solidarity, you rat scab, finks.'
Well, so after that we just &C up there and
miss three and, OF course, the other CLUBS
thew car see something queer is going on so
they lust catch a half dozen runs and then
thew coast, too. And our outfield, why they
lust sop around because what is the use if you
don't have to hustle 10 hold your job and, any
way I am telling you it was like playing on
the varsity for some insane asylum.
Anc, then, after four innings, they would
stick in the study jerks and the funny looking
DANES from the different kinds Of discussion
uoupss to get that overtime pay and Satur-
DAYS, Sundays and holidays, why us regular
hands we all got laid off so the jerks and Mrs
u, saenats female race got that big money.
So one day l asked Vicente, because he is
n LAWYER so l said, Professor, it says here
In NV contract l have got to put forth my
beat efforts for the party of the second part
and II | have got to put forth my best ef-
forts for the party of the second part and if l
don't they can fire me, so how about that?"
"That Is a yelloW-dog contract Weeme said,
.nnd next year they are going to make col
l,ctlve bargaining contract with the unit and
nobody ia going to tell us we have to kill our
selves for the rich oppressors, and, anyway,
Weenle said never mind what your contract
saws because, like always tell my jerks, to
assume that because the language is plain the
meaning is plain is merely pernlclous over
|implification."
| tell you we had great club that year
until Dissenat came along and his OLD iody
r,ns in Vicente and PantzoH and the STUDY
Jerks and the female race but after tnat II was
hsu an earth and ! am not telling ANYBODY
''A '" -