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Show I MRS. TAFT TURNS I TRICKONMURPHY a jWife of Club Owner Proves jl Doughty Warrior in Final . Bout With Obstinate Cub Manager. k j ! BY MONTY. H 7 Ne York, N. Y., April 4. It was - a. woman who kicked Charles Webb . 1 .Murphy out of the Chicago Cubs. Mrs J Katherlne B. Tatt. wife of Charles l 1? Taft, is the one who turned the trick. J J 'The 'true details of what nctuallv I lhappened on that -memorable dav a I unonth ago have leaked oulfat "last, I and the story is being told here for . ithe first time. I I When Governor Teher, -president of J ! ; the National league, arrived In Cin-J Cin-J , clrinati that afternoon, he went direct- : y to the hotel apartments of faft. I ', After a few moments of conversation 'I : between the two over the crisis in I i National league affairs, and the ne- t- cessity of getting rid of Murphy, two 'n- other men were called into the room, 'j They were John Conway Toole, at-1 at-1 torney of the National league, and the man who had drawn up the famous . National agreement as well as the ;present style of ball -players con tracts, and James E. Gaffney, presl-j presl-j dent of the Boston Braves. J Quick Action Necessary. ; Discussion by the four led to a ; unanimous conclusion that the only ; 'possible solution of the difficulty lay ; in buying Murphy out. Quick action was necessary and the question then ' arose as to what was the speediest : (possible method. The long distance 'telephone was resorted to and'Mur-' and'Mur-' phy was lined up on the other end of g the -wire, Taft did the "talking, gf It can be stated right here as a ; positive fact that Murphy did actually actu-ally own fifty-four shares of the Cubs' .stock, or a majority of the total of ' a hundred shares. Harry Ackerland of Pittsburg owned ten shares and Taft the other thirty-six shares. Mur-phy Mur-phy had bought this stock gradually gradu-ally from Taft who owned it in the. beginning a few shares every year, . with money saved out of his salary of $25,000 as president of the club'. . , Tener Calls Murphy, y At the beginning of the telephone r conversation Murphy demanded $10,-rj $10,-rj ,000 each for his shares, a figure that ,1 , Taft would not even approach. Gov-;lj Gov-;lj . erner Tener took the phone for a I moment and told Murphy some of the things that might happen to him ir he didn't sell at Taft's figure, but Murphy wouldn't budge. They had been talking altogether for an hour and a half on the phone. Mrs. Taft Turns Trick. JusJ; thon there came a loud banging bang-ing on the door. It. was opened and In rushed Mrs. Taft. She was the picture of impatience and anger. When informed that Murphy was re-i fusing to sell out she burst into exclamations. ex-clamations. "He won't sell out, huh," she began aiming her attack at her husband. "We'll see if ho won't. Thc'little in-grate! in-grate! So he thinks he can act like this and embarrass the whole Taft family, does he? Here, you take the phone again and give him your, ultimatum ulti-matum right now. No. not after a few minutes, and not after you tell me any more details. I know all I want to know. You get on the phono right now and end this thing immediately." imme-diately." There was no dodging her. Taft returned to the telephone and said to Murphy: "Nino thousand five hundred dollars dol-lars for each share of your stock 1 Accent the offer right now without another word or argument or I'll ring off and we'll use more vigorous methods meth-ods to fix this thing. Do you accept or not?" "I accept," answered Murphy, "on this condition you buy only fifty-three fifty-three shares and I will retain one." Deal Is Closed. "Done!" said Taft. "The deal is closed. Good bye!" Thus endeth Mr. Murphy. Taft has paid over a total of ?503,500 to Murphy Mur-phy since then to end the affair. Murphy Mur-phy is still ' In the club to "the extent of one share of stock, but he will have no hand in any of its affairs even if Taft does not eventually sell it to somebody else. The single share of stock will be only in the nature na-ture of an investment so far. as Murphy Mur-phy is concerned. Some people see fit to censure women wom-en who attempt to do things that ordinarily or-dinarily are regarded as men's province, prov-ince, but the Murphy case will go down in history as one case where a woman accomplished somethirtg a man didn't have nerve enough to do on his own resources. Organized baseball owes a big debt of gratitude to Mrs. Taft for her vigorous and plucky stand. |