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Show FORTUNE IT LIST SILESi EBBETS Owner of Brooklyn Club Making Money After 30 Lean Years. Ily Tribune Special Sport Se:"Mre. NEW VOliK, July S. A ft or more than thirty years of patience, Charlie Kbliots at last is beginning to collect bulky dividends on his baseball investment. invest-ment. Shortly after Noah's skiff anchored an-chored on the mount, tiie "Squire of lirooklyn'' bepan to dabble in baseball. Since somewhere alonp in the early N-'s ho has been a magnate. Year after year lie risked his bankroll bank-roll bv tyiiik' up in a ball elub. Times innumerable he finished the season lar behind in a financial way. Once or t'ice, over that lon 6veep of years, Ebbets 's ball elub made money for him, but the sum was trilling. The Brooklyns were proverbial tail-enders. With his gemus and his energy. Kb-bets Kb-bets might have pone into another business busi-ness and made a hupe fortune. Hut he stuck to baseball. Ho loved the same as a sport and to combine his pleasure and his business all in one enterprise was an ideal arrangement for him. Waits Thirty Years. Patiently, hopefully, Ebbets waited throu;h tiie vears for a turn in the tide of fortune for a bit of luck that went to other magnates, but always seemed to pass him by. But fortune refused re-fused to smile upon the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers; instead of bettering conditions became worse. "The darkest hour is just heforo dawn," goes an old saving, and it never was truer than in tiie case of Ebbets. Eb-bets. Just a trifle more than a year ago he was in financial straits; in such a'plight that it was reported on several occasions that he would have to sell out his club to satisfy creditors. How true, these reports were we cannot say with authority. But it cannot ho denied de-nied that when the lSHo season begau Ebbets 's wallet wns so thin that it hardly could be noticed. The outlook for lOlo was drearier than any other in the long history of the veteran magnate. His team didn't size up at tho outset as a pennant possibility. pos-sibility. Patronage in the Dodger park promised to be the smallest in many vears; first, because the fans seemed to have lost interest in tho game: second, sec-ond, because the Dodgers weren't figured fig-ured as a drawing card, and third, because be-cause the Feds were intrenched in Brooklyn and were making a fight for popular favor. "And right at that time,'' Ebbets said, "I was assuming the burden of the biggest payroll 1 was ever called upon to meet. ' Practically every man on my roster then was drawing from 100n'to $4500 more than in other vears. The Federal leaguers .wanted mv stars and so did I. That meant I had to outbid them, and. I assure you, those fellows certainly did boost their figures. But I met them. I didn't let one of my good players get away." Ebbets Is Rewarded. Soon after the 1915 season began the clouds rolled back and the sun began to shine through upon Ebbets. His team, to the surprise of the league, showed unexpected strength. It jumped away from the April barrier at a smashing smash-ing 'clip and on and on it went. Brooklyn Brook-lyn fans, accustomed to peeing a sixth, seventh or eighth place club, woke up to the novelty of tho situation a Dodger elu.b in a pennant fight. The fans came out in droves. The turnstiles clicked and flicked and continued con-tinued clicking. The Dodgers, contrary to predictions, didn't skid. They lingered lin-gered among the loaders right into the April stretch. Not until then were they really beaten in the bunting race. Arid the shekels poured in upon Ebbets Eb-bets as thev will do upon any magnate whose club is in the race. Ebbets, who had feared another huge financial setback set-back when the season began, found at the end that not only had he cleared nil expenses, but that, his books showed a neat profit. The Dodgers were one of the few clubs in the big leagues last season thnt cleared expenses. Ebbets's Coffers Filling. Dame Fortune'continues to smilo upon Ebbets. Probably she figures that the veteran deserves a little reward at least for his thirty years of patience. The Dodgers, as roii probably have noticed, are in the thickest part of the 191ti pennant fracas. They have ontdrawn other clubs on the road and they are averaging close to 10,000 a day at, home, including the usual 25,000 Saturday crowd. Huge ns was the Dodger home attendance at-tendance last vear, that of lfill) will go far beyond. The Brooklynites during the first three months have played to almost as many people as they did during dur-ing the entire home attendance for 1915. At home and on the road they already have drawn almost throe times as many fans as they did in the entire six months during the lean years. If the Dodgers dropped out of the pennant fight right now and didn't draw more than a few hundred fans per day for the rest of the season Ebbels would finish ahead in a financial way anyhow. But over in Brooklyn thev insist that vou perish the thought of the Dodgers doing anything else than cop the rag. The natives figure it is an absolute cinch. And already the boggiest of the bugs are sending in their applications for world scries tickets. Whereupon Charles Hercules Ebbets smiles and murmurs: "Them's my sentiments, boys." |