The war among the club owners has broken out again. William F. Baker of the Phillies, one of the National League committee charged with choosing a new chairman for the National Commission, has started a fresh effort to get Garry Herrmann off it. Frederick G. Lieb writes in the Sun that Baker called on Herrmann to resign when Cincinnati became a contender, and that Colonel Ruppert proposed that John Bruce, the Commission’s secretary, sit as chairman during the series. Herrmann ignored both.

The quarrel runs on to Ban Johnson. Lieb reports that the Yankee owners, Ruppert and Huston, Comiskey of the White Sox and Frazee of the Red Sox have pledged themselves to put Johnson out of baseball, or failing that to curb his power. Comiskey, though he was ill during the series, repeats that the time has come. “Having all my money invested in baseball,” he said, “I have no desire to entrust the welfare of my club to a man whose baseball investments run into the thousands.” Lieb would not be surprised, if the fight grows hot enough, to see the three clubs leave the league and start another. Colonel Huston says they are not contemplating it unless it is forced on them, “But this is a fight without quarter, and there is no telling where it will end.” For the present all hands are waiting on Justice Wagner of the Supreme Court, who is preparing his decision in the Mays injunction case.

The Yankees’ third-place money is still held up. President Heydler told Lieb on Wednesday that he will not vote on Navin’s protest. “I do not see how the National Commission can be expected to make any decision on this matter, and I for one will not vote on it,” he said. The money, in his view, should be held in escrow until the American League decides for itself who finished third, since the Commission has no power to act on what is entirely the American League’s affair.

THE TALK ABOUT THE SERIES

The rumors that some of the White Sox were paid to lose the series were still about this week, and the papers that noticed them set out to answer them.

Christy Mathewson, writing in the New York Times on Thursday, calls the rumors and mutterings about the honesty of the series ridiculous. He believes ball players are honest. Only once or twice in all his years, he says, has he seen more than one or two players make peculiar-looking moves, and they were quickly found out and skidded out of baseball. No one man on a team, he says, can throw a game; no manager could fool twenty players who know the game; and a pitcher who began to go bad would be taken out. The difference between winning and losing this series came to about $2,000 a man, against a player’s whole future in the game. “Suppose some gamblers started out to fix six, seven, or eight men, which I consider the minimum necessary to insure defeat,” he writes, “they could not afford to do it, and they could not find that many dishonest players on any ball club. I doubt if they could find one on a championship team.”

Daniel, in the Sun on Tuesday, wrote that there never was a series in which the scandalmongers were so busy, and that the nine-game limit made it possible. “Any man who suggests that the series was not decided on its merits every moment of the eight games, and that any man on the field was not trying his best and fighting his hardest,” he wrote, “is an enemy to baseball and does not know a ball game when he sees it.” He holds that the Cincinnati fans who cried fraud after the sixth game showed a cheap attitude. He also takes Gleason to task for an article written over his name which says that some of his players’ work looked queer in the early games: the manager, he says, should look into it or admit he never wrote it. I. E. Sanborn of the Chicago Tribune, in a syndicated column, puts the rumors down to sensation mongers, and he does not believe the integrity of the sport has been touched by anything that happened this year.

A dispatch from Chicago on Thursday gives what it calls the inside story of how the talk began, from a man who was in on the play. The day before the series, it says, word went out through the gambling fraternity in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and St. Louis that seven of the Sox had been bought, and the Reds were suddenly in great favor. Three gamblers spread the word, their friends bet heavily on Cincinnati, and the three stood to win whichever club became champion. It sets the rumors about the players at rest, and its headline in the Pittsburgh Post says the Sox players were not involved. Robert W. Maxwell of the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, who gives the same account on the authority of Harry Neily of Chicago, writes that the rumors about the players have been found untrue. Neither he nor the Chicago dispatch has heard of anyone coming forward to collect Comiskey’s reward.

One paper went the other way. Collyer’s Eye, the Chicago sporting weekly, ran a banner across its front page on Saturday saying that seven of the Sox are involved in a series scandal. Its correspondent writes that no fewer than seven are under suspicion, names several gamblers he says were behind the betting, and promises more next week. It names no player, and on the inside page, where the story is continued, the heading carries a question mark.

Comiskey himself, asked in Chicago on Thursday how he accounted for his club’s showing, said, “I cannot account for it. They were a terrible disappointment to me.” He would not take the let-down after the pennant was won as an excuse, but he said that exhibition games are bad for a club in a pennant race, because the men relax and do not try. The dispatch puts the defeat down to the pitching and to the failure of Eddie Collins, Gandil and Felsch to hit, and says the Sox pitching staff will not be the same next spring. “We need several new pitchers,” Comiskey said. On Thursday Comiskey and Gleason held a long conference, and Sanborn says the club has infielders and outfielders to trade for pitchers and that Comiskey will dig deep to buy one. Gleason, who had been to St. Louis and to Litchfield, Ill., Schalk’s home, denied that the trip had anything to do with any gambling story; it is thought he was after Dick Kerr’s signature on a contract. He has gone home to Philadelphia for the winter.

THE NINE-GAME SERIES

The newspapermen have turned against it. Daniel says there will never again be a series with a nine-game limit, and he hears that Herrmann has admitted to friends that he made a mistake. Grantland Rice ends a column by saying there won’t be any next time. The owners are less sure. Lieb found most of them calling it a great success, Ebbets in favor of keeping it and Comiskey for seven games. Heydler, asked whether the long series is permanent, answered, “No, that matter will come up this winter.”

The Government took $73,239 in war tax on the eight games, and Comiskey and Herrmann got about $95,000 each, from which they must pay for temporary seats, travel and hotels. Cincinnati has given Moran a check for $5,000 as a bonus for the pennant. Jimmy Ring came home to Brooklyn unannounced, and Brooklyn is planning a testimonial for him at Ebbets Field; New Britain, Conn., gives a banquet for Larry Kopf to-morrow night. Daniel does not see why world’s series players should have benefits at all.

RUTH WOULD NOT PLAY AT PUTNAM

Babe Ruth was billed to play first base for Putnam, Conn., against Moosup on Sunday, October 12, and he went but did not play. The Norwich Bulletin says he told Manager McDermott he would not play for less than $500, against the $300 agreed, and McDermott could not see $500 worth in it; Ruth watched for a while and drove off in his automobile with Mrs. Ruth. Putnam won, 2 to 1, before about a thousand. The Bridgeport Times headlines him a holdup man and says the fans demanded their money back. The Putnam Patriot says he put on a uniform, that the quarrel was with the man who booked him, and that most of the crowd was content to leave its money where it was. We have seen no report of the game his American League stars were to play at Ebbets Field on Columbus Day. He was to play with the Treat ’Em Roughs at Dyckman Oval yesterday.

VERNON TAKES THE MINOR LEAGUE TITLE

Vernon of the Pacific Coast League won its series with St. Paul, champions of the American Association, five games to four, taking the ninth game at Los Angeles on Friday, 2 to 1, with a run in the ninth inning before the largest crowd of the series. Dell, the Vernon pitcher, drove in the winning run. The seventh game ended in a dispute over a substitute in the Vernon line-up; how it was settled has not been reported here.

The National League has given out its reserve list for next year, and Phil Douglas is not on it, not even as a suspended player. Pittsburgh did not reserve its manager, Bezdek. Wilbert Robinson has signed again with Brooklyn and Huggins will manage the Yankees. Secretary Farrell of the National Commission has announced the sale of Jesse Baker of Richmond to the Boston Americans and of Pierson, Gullman and Eckart of Suffolk and Walsh of Norfolk to the Athletics.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18.—Howard University opened its home season this afternoon by defeating the Storer College eleven, 63 to 0. Once Coach Robinson’s machine was in motion it was too strong for the visitors, who gave way under the rush of the Howard backs. Carter ran the team at quarter, with Hughes, Downing and Williams behind him, and Holten at centre. The score of the opening game with Virginia Theological Seminary and College, a week ago, has not been printed in any paper that has come to this office.

In the Western Conference a son of the Race is holding his place. Fred Slater went with the Iowa squad to Urbana for Saturday’s game with Illinois, and the dispatches name him at right tackle, where he is expected to have the greatest season of his career. Out at Rock Island, in the professional game, Marshall played his first game at end for the Independents on the 12th, and the Argus says he did stellar work and added strength to the line, though Hammond won, 12 to 7.

DARBY, Pa., Oct. 11.—Hilldale and Art Summers’s All-American Stars, with “Bob” Shawkey of the Yankees pitching against our own “Smoke” Cockrell, fought eleven innings without a run, and then the game was called because old King Pluvius, as the Philadelphia papers have it, spilled his wet goods on the field. So many asked for a return game that Hilldale gave up its Delaware trip to play the rubber on Saturday at Hilldale Park, with Pennock of the Red Sox announced to pitch against them. The result had not reached New York when this number closed.

Rain also put off the Bacharach Giants’ double-header with the International League stars at Ebbets Field a week ago. It was set for yesterday afternoon, with “Cannonball” Redding and Wickware to pitch for Atlantic City against Dick Rudolph of the Braves and Harry Heitman. The Lincoln Giants were billed at Olympic Field against a team of league stars and a shipyard nine, and the Brooklyn Royal Giants, with Santop and Hubbard, against the Emeralds at the Catholic Protectory grounds. None of yesterday’s scores was at hand. Neither was the result of the Bacharachs’ closing game with the Disstons at Shibe Park on the 11th, nor of the Lincolns’ game with Mogridge’s big leaguers on the 12th.

At Kansas City Tierney’s All Stars, with Stengel, Zwilling and Mack Wheat in the line-up, beat the Chicago Giants, 8 to 3, before 5,000, Roy Sanders striking out thirteen. John Donaldson was to have pitched, but a charley horse kept him out. The Kansas City Sun gives the defeat to Rube Foster’s men in its front-page headline. The clubs may meet again at Association Park.

Benny Leonard had Phil Bloom at his mercy at Detroit on Wednesday night. The newspaper men there gave the lightweight champion a one-sided decision at the end of ten rounds, and the dispatch says he all but stopped Bloom in three of them. John Pollock of the Evening World reports that the gross receipts were $10,400 and that Leonard took $3,400 for his night’s work. On the same card Pal Moore was given the newspaper decision over Jabez White.

Leonard’s bout with Johnny Dundee at Hartford on October 27 has come down in the world this week. It was announced on Tuesday as fifteen rounds to a decision for the title, at the State Armory. By Thursday the promoter, Joe Mulvihill, had cut it to ten, and the head of the Connecticut Home Guard was saying it would not be held in the armory at all. Daniel writes that Leonard will not risk his title in a fifteen-round fight to a decision, and that the news of one was premature. Dundee warmed up for it by beating Young Kloby, the New England welterweight champion, at Lawrence, Mass., on Columbus Day, before 15,000.

Thirteen thousand jammed the First Regiment Armory at Newark last Monday night, by the Sun’s count; the Tribune says 8,000. Willie Jackson beat Tommy Tuohey in the best bout of the night. Tuohey won the sixth and seventh rounds with one eye closed, and he was groggy but fighting at the last bell. Charlie Weinert beat Al Roberts, who in the seventh round turned and started for his corner, and came back only when Referee Brennan began to count. Pete Herman beat Harold Farese on points in a bout so slow that the crowd whistled and sang, and the Evening World says hundreds walked out; Benny Valger beat Frankie Brown in another dull one. On Tuesday Valger went to Boston and stopped Jimmy Hill of Australia in six rounds. Ted Lewis knocked out Jimmy McCabe in the first round at Atlantic City on Thursday.

There is no match for Dempsey. The Sun’s boxing writer hears that he may meet somebody in a Jersey ring early in December, and that the stage has not paid as well as the champion and his manager hoped. Jimmy Wilde has signed with Tex Rickard to box at the opening of the International Sporting Club on February 3. Freddie Welsh, the former lightweight champion, is held in $1,000 bail on a charge of biting off part of a man’s ear in a fight in a Broadway restaurant; Welsh says the man fell on a bottle.

The A. A. U. boxers did not sail on Friday. Frank Cassidy of the Ozanam A. A., at 135 pounds, Ashton Donza of New Orleans, at 115, and John Burke of Pittsburgh, at 175, who won their places at the trials last Monday, are now to sail on the Stavangerfjord on Thursday; the marine strike has put the ship’s sailing back again.

TULSA, Okla., Oct. 19.—Sam Langford and Jack Thompson, who fought fifteen hard rounds to a draw here in August, meet again to-morrow night at Convention Hall for what the Tulsa press calls the championship of Negro heavyweights, and for something more. The Tulsa Athletic Club has put up a belt valued at $1,500, and the winner takes it on condition that he meet Harry Wills here at a later date. Langford came on Monday and has been working daily at the Dreamland theatre before packed houses; Thompson came in from the Pacific coast on Saturday and surprised the fans with his speed. Langford, the Tulsa World concedes, is respected by both races as a real sportsman and gentleman.

Wills, for his part, meets Joe Jeannette at the opening of Dave Driscoll’s Arena A. C. in Jersey City to-morrow night, the only pair left whole on a card that injuries have shuffled twice. The Sun writes of him this week as doubtless the ablest of our boxers since Peter Jackson, and allows that many experts would favor him against Dempsey. Then it says plainly why the question will not be settled: “there is no prospect of a meeting between the negro and the champion, for Dempsey’s manager has drawn the color line, in conformity with the precedent set by the great John L. Sullivan in the case of Peter Jackson.” No report of Wills’s bout at Billy Roche’s show on October 9 has come to hand.

LATONIA, Ky., Oct. 18.—C. M. Garrison’s Be Frank, a three-year-old gelding, won the Latonia Cup at two miles and a quarter this afternoon, beating W. S. Kilmer’s Exterminator on a heavy track. Only four started. Exterminator, carrying 134 pounds to Be Frank’s 122, made the pace; Be Frank was held hard for a mile and a quarter, then moved up and took the lead, and Ensor brought him home in 4:17. Legal was third and Kingozi fourth. The Racing Form says Exterminator was beaten but not disgraced, and carried his weight in gallant and game style. The cup was worth $7,380 to the winner, and Be Frank goes on to Louisville for the Louisville Cup.

The meeting closed to-day after twenty-two days, and the Racing Form calls it the best autumn racing in Latonia’s history. Eastern horses have taken more than $100,000 in Kentucky stakes this year.

On Wednesday G. W. Loft’s On Watch, shipped from Laurel for the purpose, won the Queen City Handicap for two-year-olds in the mud with what the Racing Form calls ridiculous ease, from Kinburn and The Swimmer. It was worth $7,900. The Sun gives the time as 1:46 3/5; the Racing Form’s chart reads 1:48.

The rematch with Blazes that Maryland offered $5,000 for is off. Blazes struck a front ankle at work, the wound became infected, and Captain Parr doubts he will race again this year. Purchase, whose lameness ended the talk of a match with Sir Barton, has been put by for the year.

Fifteen thousand went out to Empire City for the opening on Columbus Day, and saw the Columbus Handicap turn into a two-horse race in the mud, Audacious cantering home in front of Spur. On Saturday R. T. Wilson’s Hannibal won the Westchester Handicap at a mile in 1:40 2/5, from Star Master and Jock Scot, three lengths clear by the Sun’s account and two by the Racing Form’s. Masda, the full sister to Man o’ War, beat a field of good sprinters in the Leviathan.

At Laurel J. E. Widener’s Duettiste won the Chevy Chase Steeplechase. Billy Kelly came back from his bleeding on Thursday and was beaten at odds-on by Camoufleur; lack of condition told. The Jockey Club has ruled that horses and horsemen who take part in the Hagerstown meeting will be outlawed.

The national 18.2 balk-line billiard championship opens to-day in the ballroom of the Hotel Astor, the first championship at the game in several seasons. Seven are entered: Willie Hoppe, the champion; Jake Schaefer, son of the late Jake; Welker Cochran of Detroit, at twenty-two the youngest; Ora Morningstar; George Sutton; George F. Slosson, who is sixty-five; and Koji Yamada of San Francisco. Hoppe plays Cochran to-night.

Fred Hawthorne of the Tribune gives his own ranking of the tennis players of 1919, which is not the association’s: Johnston first, Tilden second and Kumagae of Japan third.

There will be no international polo next year. The Hurlingham Club has told the American association that its members have not the ponies since the war, and it may take up a challenge in 1921. When the Poughkeepsie regatta is revived, the stewards say, the varsity race will be at three miles, not four.

Bob Crawford ran two miles at Easton in 10:07 2/5, a new Lafayette record. Charlie Pores of the Millrose A. A. defends his national ten-mile title at the Brooklyn Athletic Field on Saturday; Villar Kyronen, his clubmate, has pneumonia and will miss it. Columbia beat City College across country at Van Cortlandt Park. C. F. Van Vleck, jr., won the Greenwich invitation golf tournament from Sam Graham, 5 and 4.

FOR THE NEW HAVEN TRIP AND THE COLD STANDS. Ulsters of heavy Scotch cloth, $30 to $50. Box coats for town, $35 to $45. BRANDT & ROWE, Clothiers, 1284 Broadway.

THE GRIDIRON BY WIRE. Every Saturday the principal college games, play by play as the operator receives them, on the big board. Harmon Hall, 43d Street near Broadway. Doors open at 2 o’clock. Admission 25 cents, plus war tax.

A HAT FOR THE POLO GROUNDS. Soft felts in the fall shades, $4 and $5. Derbies, $5. Tweed caps for the open stand, $1.50. KELLER’S, 210 Nassau Street.

BACK NUMBERS. Nos. 1, 2 and 3 of this paper, with the whole of the world’s series, may still be had at this office. Five cents each; by mail, seven.

THE SPORTING CHRONICLES is published every Monday. Subscription, $2.50 a year; single copies five cents. Correspondence on matters of sport is invited, and will be answered in these columns.