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Show What Coasters Are Gossiping About in Off-Season It seems likely that Gard Gislason, I Saint second baseman, will have to bat- I tie for his job next spring against a vet- I eran. Yesterday President Murphy of the Saints accepted an offer from the i Indianapolis club of the American asso- ! ciation, by the terms of which Second ' Baseman A. Orandall will join Salt Lake next year. Crandall, of course, will have I to make good or the deal is off. Cran- ! dall is a player of much experience and ! has been with the Indianapolis club for ! three seasons. i Crandall's batting record for 1915 fol- , lows: Games, 140; at bat, 494; runs, 74;, earned runs, 5ti; hits, 13S; two-base hits, ' 21; three-base lifts, 3; home runs, 2; total to-tal bases, J 71; sacrifice hits, 20; stolen ; bases, 23; bases on balls, 53; struck out, 45; percentage, .279. His fielding record : Games, 139; put-outs, put-outs, 367; assists, 431; errors, 50; percentage, percent-age, .941. Introducing Ivan Howard, successor to Frank L. Chance as manager of the Angels! An-gels! That, at least, is the slate. If Chance signs to lead the Chicago Cubs, and if Howard can be secured from the Portland-Cleveland combination, he will manage man-age the Los Angeles club during the 1917 pennant race and possibly many pennant pen-nant races1 to come. There may be denials of this. There undoubtedly will be denials, and many of them, for that appears to be part of the baseball business. But the tip Is straight. It Is no mere rumor or guess work. It is just one of those pieces of information that are discovered when they aren't supposed to be. It comes from a source absolutely reliable. Despite denials, de-nials, it is the true story of the real situation wait and see! The unexpected may happen, of course. Cliance in.iv not go back to Chieaso at all. Then Portland and Cleveland might not want to let Howard loose. Even then something might come up to switch the programme. But rcht now Ivan Howard is the man Johnny Powers has secured to take Chance's place at the head of the Angels. If this piogramme is carried out Coast league fans will see the nov&l spectacle of two brothers leading rival clubs against one another. And the chances are that when Del and his Oaks meet Ivan and his Angels tho i ivalry will be remarkably keen. ' Ivan ha.s always been known not only as a good ball player, but as an unusually smart one. He was Cap Dillon's right-hand right-hand man before he advanced to the majors, ma-jors, and displaced ability as a leader in that capacity. He mav not be quite fast enough for major league company, but he is a star in this league. If Howard leads the Angels be will be a playing manager. Powers has already al-ready said that Chance's successor would be of that type Los Angeles Tribune. San Francisco's winter colony of tna- I jor league ball players, like all Gaul, is divide- into three parts, viz.. to-wit and I. e., players who think there will be a. strike, players who think there will not be a strike and players who don't know whether there will be a strike or not. The last class ran be shelved with very little comment. Under this heading come the players who have a perfect understanding under-standing with their managers and club owners, who ha ve satisfactory contra cts and who are at peace with the world In general. The plaver who thinks there will he j a strike does so because of his firm be- i llof that the Players' fra tern it y is the real big noise In baseball, and that for some reason or other i's Importance ha.; not as yet been Improved upon the mac- ! nates. The threatened slashing of salaries, sal-aries, the forcing of the players band.-. ; now that the Federal league is out of1 the way. and the open a niagonisiu of 1 some magnates for the poor, downtrod- 1 den slave, have brought ?f fairs to a head in major league baseball, think the ; members of class 1, and a radical move ; on the part of the f ra ternity. ba -ke( up hy the layers who are In sympathy but i not active members, is to be expected, j This radical move can be nothing but a . strike. The player who thinks there will no be a strike has a better argument than1 the athlete who looks for a big lockout. lock-out. One of these tossers explained the situation sit-uation as It appealed to him In a short fanfest the other day. "I can't see where the strike will get the players anything." he declared. "Suppose a walkout oMer is issued bv the fraternity heads. What will be i be result? Just a lot of bluster. Can you expect for a moment that plavers like Cobb and Collins, who are drawing thou- i sands of dollars every year, will care to step aside and lose all that money be- j cause some bunch of dissatisfied players' who are getting three or four thousand j I at the very most want to strike? There isn't a chance of this happening. "On the other hand, there have been many contracts, raised on account of the : Federal league war. Some of these con-j con-j tracts still have a year to run; some have more. If this proposed strike becomes a reality, the magnates will have the chance of their lives to get out from under un-der these war-lime contracts. Don't you suppose the wise playeiH know this as well as the magnates? They are not going go-ing to take a cliance on a strike now any more than they have ever done. "There will be a lot of fuss, of course, and some hot-headed fellows are liable to start something, but t can't for a moment mo-ment see where the majority of the men will get out." After listening to three sides of the argument, ar-gument, it ought to be a simple matter to form an opinion on the threatening war betwwen the players and the club owners. But it isn't. The players may strike and they may not. There's a trite saying, which originated sometime in the days of Noah, which reads in this wise: "Baseball's a funny game." And the cause of this burst of philosophy can be traced back to the indisputable in-disputable truth that the ball player is a funny creature, and you never can tell how or where he will jump. CHICAGO, Dec. 6. The Chicago National Na-tional league club will establish its 1917 spring training camp in Pasadena, Cal.. it was officially announced today. The players will depart for the coast on special spe-cial train February 27. Recreation park is to go into the hands of the wreckers next week. The contract con-tract for demolishing the old grandstand will be pil-id up in neat stacks of ancient has been let, and it is stipulated that it lumber by January 1. In the meantime Hen Berry will oecide definitely upon the type of grandstand he will build. Several tentative stts or plans have been drawn and Hen has just about made up his mind lo adopt the set providing pro-viding for a double-decker. This will give more room for the play-field, play-field, and will also seat as many spectators specta-tors as any -single decker yet considered. consid-ered. When the new stand is completed there will be seats for 16,500 fans, against 11 .000 for i he old plant, and there will be also (hat additional sixty-five feet of ground in right field. The present clubhouse will stand for a short time, to be used for storage purposes. pur-poses. But Berry plans the building of a new clubhouse, which will be big enough to serve not alone as- a dressing place, but as a real club, where the players may lounge during idle hours. San Francisco Examiner. Frank O'Brien, the young catcher, who is wintering at his home in San Francisco, Fran-cisco, has t urned scout for the Portia nd club. He has sent in the signed contract con-tract of Charlie Schorr, a left-hander who has been pitching semi-pro ball around the Trolley league circuit with considerable success. According to O'Brien, who has seen Schorr in action since the Coast league season clo.-:tfd, the young southpaw is full of promise, snd is well worthy a trial in class A A circles. Portland Telegram. |