- Raid on Big Leagues Has Netted Several Expensive Stars, With Others Yet to Be Announced
- Majors Are Retaining Men at Increased Salaries.
January 17, 1914 Age 22
By W. J. O’Connor St Louis Post Dispatch
BANK accounts of organized baseball already have suffered a “tap” of at least $150,000 by the war-like Federal League, an infant organization yet toddling with uncertain step. What the present war will eventuate in is a subject for one with a vivid imagination to conjure with.
Owners of franchises in the big leagues have only themselves to blame for this condition. Their desire to inflate salaries, purchase prices and paid attendance figures for the benefits which would accrue from such advertising, caused sober businessmen to desert breweries, restaurants, law offices and stock exchanges and take a flier into the game which may turn out a Croesus over night.
Garry Herrmann’s monumental “barry” in announcing the sale, outright, of Joe Tinker to Brooklyn for $25,000, two-fifths of which was to go to Tinker, was the biggest boost the Federals received in the past year. This sale caused discontent in Tinker’s mind and eventually led to his jump to the outlaws, which was the first big business transacted by the warring faction.
How the Figures Appear.
Allowing that Tinker is worth $25,000 and the other ball players of like or near ability are worth a proportionate amount one might compute the losses of the major leagues as follows: Tinker, $25,000; Knabe, $15,000; Killefer $15,000: Brennan, $15,000; Mowrey, $8000; Packard, $5000; Cole, $6000; M. Brown, $6000; Kirkpatrick, $5000. Total, $100,000.
Add to this the loss suffered by the major league clubs – 16 of em’ – in increased salaries the expense of sending out scouts to sign embryo jumpers, of paying the transportation of men who are called in to sign, and you have, conservatively, another $50,000.
Owner Ebbets and Manager Robinson of the Superbas, who have been hit hardest, next to the Phillies, must have spent at least $600 on railroad fares and hotel bills during their trip which carried them all the way from Gotham to Kansas City, with many tangent jumps. What inducements they offered their players to get in line, is another question.
Owner Britton paid real money to travel to Pittsburg to sign Hagerman and Doak, while Scout Bob Connery didn’t travel on a phoney pass when he hit the blazed trail for Louisiana to snare Oakes, Perritt and Whitted. Neither did Branch Rickey go as the guest of the B. O. to West Virginia to get Baumgardner, nor did Gus Williams walk here from Omaha. Add, again, the increases which were offered these men to decorate a parchment.
Yea, friend, $150,000 is a very conservative estimate of haul which the long arm of the Federal League already has made from the strong boxes of the big Leagues.
Inflation of Prices Makes Majors’ Losses Appear Even More Severe
The system whereby a price of $15,000 is placed on such men as Knabe, Killefer and Brennan is very simple to solve. Last fall the Phillies announced that they had paid $10,000 for Catcher Burns, a Cardinal cast-off of 1911, who made good In the International League. At best Burns is an experiment, while Killefer was universally acknowledged the best young catcher in the National League last season. By right we should have listed Reindeer as a $20,000 asset. His youth considered, he should be worth more than Tinker, who is a bit spavined.
Manager McGraw last summer announced that he had paid $10,500 for Rube Schaupp, a pitcher in the Wisconsin-Illinois League. If Schaupp is worth that price, Addison Brennan, deemed next to Sallee as a southpaw pitcher, easily is worth $15,000. The difference is that we know Brennan is a good pitcher. Frank Chance, so he said, paid $11,000 for Frits Maisel, a third baseman who can run fast. Mike Mowrey can’t run like Cobb, but he’s a demon hitter in the pinch and a brilliant fielder. He’s cheap at $8000.
Of course, Catcher Burns may never have cost $10,000 and Maisel might have been bought for $2000, while Schaupp doesn’t listen like a $10,500 fish; but if these figures are incorrect there’s no one to blame but the torpid, over-fed owners of big League clubs. Quite properly they now are suffering.
One Interesting question now is: Will the Major Leagues stand by and see their corral raided and their branded slaves stolen in daylight? They may invoke the reserve clause and start a legal battle. Anent this, President Steininger of the local team says:
“We have opinions from the best lawyers in every state in which we expect to operate and we have been told, unanimously, that the big League contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.”