| OCR Text |
Show THERB: was a pleasant period of existence during which one could turn to the sporting page with the prospect of reading about sports. "On the sports page," as the late William Lyon Phelps once told me, "you read about competitive achievement a round of golf in 67, a home run with two on, a three-hit game, a long run, a thrilling horse race, a story to lift you above the humdrum of dull days." Those features m still exist but lately they have Grantland Rice been clogged with strikes, unions at work, Mexican lawsuits, football players being haled before the courts for contract troubles, lawyers' law-yers' pleas, Judges' decisions. The gaunt shadow of Blackstone has fallen rather drearily across the scene. The courts are becoming enmeshed en-meshed in football, baseball and racing cases, with lawyers. Judges union leaders and politicians horning horn-ing in on what once were tests ol skill, courage and stamina. It all is part of the badly befogged times. There isn't any questioning the fact that many things have been out of line Neither football nor baseball base-ball contracts can be held legally valid when the employer can hold a man for life, but also (ire him on 10 days' notice. That, of course, is not a contract. It may be a neces- I snry way to handle certain intricate situations, but there is nothing legal i about it. Club owners in baseball long before this should have set up ! a minimum tug league wage and also should have made some provisions provi-sions for division, with the player in question of the price for which the player was sold or traded. Many baseball club owners are extremely liberal, others are not strictly to the contrary. The ballplayer de- , serves better protection than he has received in too many cases heretofore. here-tofore. In professional footbaK we read where most of the eluhs in the two leagues sign up from 50 to 60 players play-ers apiece but their league rules say they can keep only 3.1 of these players. What about the rontraets the others have signed those who will be released on short notice? If a player can be fired on quick notice, no-tice, why shouldn't he jump on quick notice for better pay? It is a tough problem, since baseball base-ball and football are strictly competitive com-petitive games wherein certain ball parks, because of their size, such i as the Yankee stadium, will draw 1 more paid admissions by mid-June than smaller parks in cities such as St. Louis will draw over the course of the season. It isn't often that a Tom Yawkey comes along who has little interest in the financial side of his team and who is willing to spend millions to get a winner. What the Future Hold All this happens during the best season baseball ever has dreamed of in the way of crowds and public interest; and to what looked to be i the best season professional foot-j foot-j ball ever has known. Just how the sports public will re- act to all these complications still is a guess. It may be that the public has taken such a beating from so i many wrecking strikes that it has become numb and no longer feels any pain. Every side has been protected pro-tected and defended except that of the public, which happens to repre-' repre-' sent more than 100 million of our j population. These 100 million apparently appar-ently don't count. They are only around to be shoved aside. Just how the keyed-up fanatics ! who pay the toll will react to all jithis outside trouble Is anybody's guess. The odds are that most of i them won't bother. The public al-j al-j ways has been a glutton for a beating, beat-ing, and habit is hard to change. There are many tangles and tough breaks to beset the athlete. Those drafted or sold to tail-end teams get , all the worst of It. A college play-! play-! er can pick his own campus and most of the better high school play-i play-i ers like to be enrolled with winning j teams. It's better to win than to act as a door mat on an outclassed 1 squad. It may be that a union could help ! in professional baseball and football, foot-ball, but it would have been a bet-! bet-! ter way if the leading players had l arranged their own organizations ! to deal' with club owners. An outsider out-sider stepping into the working club-! club-! house of a ball club or a football team to harangue the players is I something out of line. It wouldn't have been a bad idea if baseball and football players followed fol-lowed the lead of the golfers, who have bad their Professional Golfers' association working ably for some time. This organization has been well directed by Ed Dudley, the president, and a capable board of directors and other officials. The one cheerful note in all this is that a large part of the public is turning more than ever to the playing side rather than toward that of the spectator. This is the healthiest sign we've seen in many years. |
