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Show j Owners Object to Buying of Pennants in Major Leagues ! mmm BY GEORGE T CHADWK K. i Bpedal COfTeSDOndtanl of The- staji- daxa-Kxainioeri (Copyright, 1121, by The Standard-B Standard-B Ilxamlner.) NEW YORK. ct 14 There art H six major league baseball owners wht 1 are determined that the selling ol B human flesh, designated on the sport- lng pages as ball players, shall cease during certain periods of tho year. H-. j;' it were to cea"e altogether It ssould be the beet thing that could happen to organized baseball. It Is principle that Is soundly opposed to B the orthodox Idea of personal I tlx rly. as foreign ship owners are to the Daughcrty dry ship ruling. Three of the elx owners who object to "buy-lng "buy-lng of pennants," during tho season are In the National league. Three are in the American league. There la likely to be a fourth added In the! Nation it league, and In time a fifth, g The "poor" major league owners B who have only nickels to the dollar of snnie of their rivals, made up their minds that they haven't much hope of getting Into a world series under P present laws of baseball Nut rulcx, but laws, the laws that tell the clubs what they may and may not do. HONED is INSTINCT. The poor owners are right. They are beginning to find themselves. They have discovered what a man with a lot of money and an Instinct for gambling can do when he gets into a game where the principal thing Is to raise the other fellow out of It. Exactly as in poker, the chap who has the hng purse has the better end of tho bet, under present conditions The bet hinges on the securing of ball players. Ball players are secured when most needed b those who ire ready to bet high on the possibility of getting Into a world series, and the bet high by offering thousand for available players who tho poor B owner can offer only pnltry hundreds. In 1919 the New York National eague club was battling the i'lnctn-natls i'lnctn-natls to win the championship. There nn.e a time when it seemed to the "Slants' mnniciT that h could not win with what he had and suggested the owner buy freth material. The plunge was made, but even with added strength she Giants could not Again In 19?n the contents of the exchequer were lavished upon the land. It brought no championship but H made the pace too hot for some of the others. In 1921 success crowned the sperading of kale and In 1922 It won another opportunity to play for the grand stake Contemporaneously with this method of getting there another club pursued the same policy with much tho same results. Out when the $1 admissions do not grow as thickly on the bushes aa they do In the east some owners were oper-atlng oper-atlng on the old half fashioned doc-trine doc-trine and the good sporting platform which culled for matching of wits against w its. They succeeded after a fashion, but their patrons objects and asked whether the national game was a simple question like buying ogg and butter or really wae a game In which personal skill and personal mentality counted for something against the Jingle of the coin on the Th players wanted to know something about It. They never had been consulted since baseball had drifted by easy stages Into the sell-lng sell-lng of a mnn'e labor ax auction, and h more and more of them went to the larger collegee of the country their opinions changed upon the right of a company to hitch them up to a contract which run to perpetuity. That le one reason why A baae-ball baae-ball player's union Is at hand whether the owners recognize it or not. It woe eald that a commissioner of base-ball base-ball had been appointed to nee that the player received Justice, but the players think the commissioner of baseball has forgotten. Anyhow the) did not appoint blm. nor did they have anything to do with the ap-polntroent. ap-polntroent. .Some of them go eo far I 'e to say that they can't see tho I j eiHghtest necessity for the comraission-H comraission-H er of baseball, eepeelally 'he him ealary of $50,000 That's the boll I I 1 pluyere' side of it. The ball players, have ben sold ,.-rrr the vwlshed to be sold or H not and they have 3efn 0 ncr make I thousands of dollars by exchanging , them to other clubs. They got none I of tho mon y and sometltm-s th.-y ! did not get a penny of increase In their salaries, yet the fact that they jwero transferred at such high flg-I flg-I ures would seem to be proof that they were superior players and en- titled to an Increaae.. Perhaps anygrle vances thaft the1 I layers might hold would not come to anything were It not for tho fact that sonio of the club owners feel that their future Is threatened on ' much the same lines as that of tho ball players. , That Is why six ow ners have agreed that they will sanction a rule erhfa b will prohibit the sale of any ball player exoe-pt during the waiver price nt'ter May IB of the season at hand Some would prohibit the salo when the season starts. It would put the managers on a flat basis, each one having to work out his problems with What h had at hand, and none of them able to draw on the purse strings to recruit a team at the 1 Lt moment and to lay off or get rid of i i enough dead wood to bring Its stan-1 Ldard back to 100 after It had dwindled down to 60. . If tho owners of basebail clubs) lever do enter upon such a course It' Will be the first time th- managerial i Job has had a real test In a long time.1 But the ball players are going even1 further; they are dl.scus.slng under their breath that they won't be sold at all unless they receive the money which la paid for them, less that part which might be due to the club orlg-1 inally holding them because of their "bringing up." And some of them I never were brought up They "growod" like Topsy 00 |