The Sporting Chronicles, Vol. I. No. 7, Monday, November 10, 1919: Notre Dame Beats Army 12 to 9

The three owners who make up the quorum of the American League’s board of directors, Comiskey of the White Sox, Frazee of the Red Sox and Ruppert of the Yankees, met on Wednesday at the Hotel Biltmore, and ordered the National Commission to pay the Yankees’ players their share of the third-place money of the world’s series. Johnson and Dunn of Cleveland did not attend. The Sun, which gives the meeting about three columns, prints the resolution at length, and says it was unanimous.

The board, it says, declared Johnson’s suspension of Mays to have been without authority and void, and Mays in good standing. It says Johnson had failed to submit a tabulated statement of the games won and lost, and that the board therefore canvassed the games itself under Section 54 of the constitution, disallowed Detroit’s protest, and counted all the games Mays pitched for New York. It sets down the final standing as Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Detroit, St. Louis, Boston, Washington and Philadelphia, and directs the Commission to pay “forthwith.” A certified copy was sent to the Commission.

Johnson said in Chicago on Thursday that, as he understood it, the Mays case is still in the courts, with thirty days allowed to file a motion for appeal, and that the Commission would do well to keep the disputed money. Heydler, the Sun reports, refused to express an opinion. Underwood thinks it practically certain that the money will be held until the American League’s affairs are aired in court, since Herrmann and Heydler make a majority of the Commission.

The joint committee of the two major leagues met the same day at the Knickerbocker and agreed upon a man to take Garry Herrmann’s place as chairman of the Commission, whose name was kept secret. Heydler was told to telephone Johnson to ask when and where he could meet the committee to ratify the choice. Johnson, by long distance, said he would meet the committee provided Colonel Ruppert was not present, and that he would on no account attend any meeting of a committee on which the Yankee owner sat. Ruppert is Johnson’s own appointee to the committee; Navin of Detroit, the other American League member, has recently resigned from it; the National League members are Veeck of Chicago and Baker of Philadelphia. Underwood says that puts the matter at a standstill, and that the majority of the National League magnates would rather delay the choice of a chairman a few weeks than be drawn into the legal fight that is shaking the American League. Daniel names Judge Landis of Chicago as the most likely man for the chair, says George Wharton Pepper is understood to have refused, and recalls that Big Bill Edwards was suggested some time ago; these are rumors, and the committee’s own man is still unnamed.

TALK OF A THIRD MAJOR LEAGUE

Underwood writes on Saturday that Comiskey, Frazee and Ruppert stand ready to launch a third major league as a last resort, but he sees little likelihood of it. The three, he says, expect to beat Johnson in the courts and in his own league, at the annual meeting of the American League next month, where they have several aces to play; two clubs’ financial ties to Johnson, he thinks, may break first. Among those named as reported willing to join a new league are General Coleman du Pont, Harry Sinclair, Commander J. K. L. Ross, Edsel Ford and Price McKinney, with new clubs in Cleveland, Detroit, Montreal and Pittsburgh; Underwood adds that the making public of the names was unauthorized. He notes a dangerous trend toward syndicate baseball.

FROM THE CLUBS

Huggins, the Yankees’ manager, back from Cincinnati, told Underwood that Frank Baker is out of baseball for good and living on his farm at Trappe, that Pratt says he is through, and that he will probably make a change in his catching staff. Fewster would go to third base if Baker stays out. He has no strong feeling about the spitball, he says, and will stand with the majority; he thinks, like Ebbets, that the veterans should have a year to learn a new delivery. The Sun’s staff notes say that the spitball probably will be abrogated and that few pitchers will be hurt by it, and that a majority of the managers favor a rule at the December meeting letting a pitcher be batted for and stay in the game, if it is announced before the game begins. No rule has been passed.

William P. Gray, president of a New England theatre company, is reported to be seeking the Boston Americans, and Bill Carrigan, his assistant in the theatre business, would probably come back to manage the club; the Sun says the report is denied by some of those concerned. We have no news of Ruth this week.

The International League, at a special meeting at the Hotel Imperial on Wednesday, sold the Binghamton franchise to an Akron corporation, backed by Goodyear, for $30,000, over offers from Montreal, Syracuse, Providence and Scranton. President Fultz says the Binghamton owner was wrong to release his players, and will take the matter to the meeting of the minor leagues at Springfield on Tuesday. The meeting over whether to return to the draft, the Sun says, was long and stormy. President Martin of the Southern League says he favors peace between the majors and the minors.

Lieb, in yesterday’s Sun, says McGraw calls the Giants’ pitching staff of last August, Toney, Barnes, Nehf, Benton and Douglas, the best he has had. Douglas is on the ineligible list after last fall’s suspension, and Lieb thinks he will probably be put back. Wally Pipp, who was married a week ago, sails for Cuba to play in the winter league there.

NEW YORK, Nov. 9.—The Lincoln Giants and Guy Empey’s Treat ’Em Roughs have come to the last day of their series for the semi-professional championship of Manhattan. At Dyckman Oval a week ago to-day Joe Williams beat Jess Barnes again, the Lincolns winning, 10 to 4, with thirteen hits, and Empey’s team won the second game, 7 to 2, in five innings, which were all the light allowed; Archer pitched for the Lincolns. The series then stood even, two games each, by the Sun’s count. On Tuesday, Election Day, at Olympic Field, Empey’s team won, 3 to 2: with two out and two on in the last inning Hubbard, the Lincolns’ pitcher, walked Larry Doyle and hit Kavanaugh, and the winning run came in. The second game was stopped by darkness in the second inning, with the score tied at 1 to 1. Frisch of the Giants made four hits. The series stands three to two for Empey’s team, and the deciding games were to be played on Sunday at Dyckman Oval, with Tesreau and Barnes for Empey’s and Williams for the Lincolns. We have no result.

We have not found the result of the Bacharach Giants’ game with the International Stars at Ebbets Field on the 2nd. The Kansas City Sun and the Cleveland Gazette of Saturday print no sport at all; the Sun’s only item is a boxing card advertised for Armistice Night at 14th and Michigan. We have no scores from Howard, Hampton, Lincoln or Wilberforce.

Jack Dempsey has signed to box Joe Beckett, the English champion, at New Orleans on March 17. The Sun carries it across the top of its sports page on Wednesday: Dempsey signed at Mobile on Tuesday, in an agreement announced by Dominick Tortorich, the New Orleans promoter, for twenty rounds and $125,000, if Beckett beats Carpentier in London on December 4. If Carpentier wins, Tortorich says, he will have his London agent sign the Frenchman. On Thursday the Sun adds a second offer, $75,000 from a New Orleans promoter named Abrams, for Dempsey to box Knockout Bill Brennan beforehand, which makes $200,000 for two bouts; that depends on Brennan beating Tom McMahon on December 1. Kearns writes from Mobile that Dempsey will go to England, France or anywhere in the world to defend the title, so long as the purse is the largest, and that the winner of Beckett and Carpentier is his logical opponent. Then the Sun of yesterday reports Dempsey on crutches at Baton Rouge. He was hurt on Friday night in a circus he is travelling with, and will not be able to box for several weeks. The plan of the Newark promoter, Dave MacKay, for a bout with Fulton on New Year’s Day or Washington’s Birthday has not been heard of since.

Joe Stecher beat Strangler Lewis at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, in one hour, thirty-one minutes and three seconds, with the body scissors, before a packed house. Referee Bothner had it; the Sun says Lewis, who weighed 236 pounds, carried too much flesh, and that he had the better of it on points until Stecher got his legs around him after three headlock slams. Caddock telegraphed the Garden that he would meet the winner for the title, which answers the talk that he had retired. Zbyszko beat John Pedroff in a minute and forty-two seconds in a preliminary, and sailed from Copenhagen on Saturday to resume his career in this country.

At Newark on Tuesday night Johnny Dundee stopped Tommy Tuohey in the fifth round at the Fourth Regiment Armory, before a jammed house; Referee Henry Lewis stopped it after Tuohey had been down twice. Augie Ratner got the verdict over Soldier Bartfield in eight rounds in what the Sun calls a combination of boxing and wrestling, in which Bartfield turned his left ankle in the sixth; Joe Benjamin of San Francisco outboxed Joe Welling. At Paterson on Thursday Mike O’Dowd, the middleweight champion, knocked out Billy Kramer in the second round, and at Jersey City Johnny Buff outpointed Max Williamson. Leonard boxes Bartfield to-night at Driscoll’s Arena in Jersey City, with Dundee and Coogan and Al Roberts and Dan O’Dowd on the same card, and Governor-elect Edwards of New Jersey is to be there.

Jimmy Wilde, the British flyweight champion, reached Halifax on the Baltic on Saturday, and is to arrive in New York this morning. The Sun says George Dwyer is to give him a luncheon at the Hotel Imperial, and that the International Sporting Club expects to open its season on February 3 with Wilde. The club’s committee on rules and weights met on Friday under Dr. Raycroft, and will meet again next Friday to receive a draft code.

TULSA, Okla., Nov. 5.—Harry Wills beat Sam Langford here on Wednesday night, in fifteen rounds, at Convention Hall, and took the belt. The Tulsa World has Wills the clear winner, with eight rounds to Langford’s one and four even; Langford, it says, covered up and evaded a knockout in the eighth round when Wills hurt him. It says Wills took the aggressive from the start, against a long career and an old man’s legs. Langford was the holder of what the paper calls the world’s Negro championship. We have seen no New York paper carry the result.

BALTIMORE, Nov. 5.—S. C. Hildreth’s Mad Hatter won the Pimlico Autumn Handicap on Wednesday, by four lengths, beating Bridesman, with Sir Barton, the Kentucky Derby winner, a poor third, twelve lengths behind. Sir Barton carried 132 pounds, and Mad Hatter 111. Billy Kelly and Lord Brighton were scratched. Daniel says in the Sun that it was the worst beating Sir Barton has had this season, that he ran at least fifteen pounds below his proper rating, and that his trainer, Guy Bedwell, made a serious mistake in not retiring him after the Saratoga races; Daniel says John E. Madden had warned of it in August.

Sir Barton came back on Friday. With Clarence Kummer riding in place of Loftus, he made all the running in the Serial weight-for-age handicap, at a mile, and beat The Porter, with Billy Kelly third and Lucullite fourth. The Sun heads it “Sir Barton shows big improvement.” He carried 130 pounds. Mad Hatter was withdrawn.

On Saturday, before a record crowd, with every mutuel record at Pimlico broken, Royce Rools won the Bowie Handicap, in what the Sun’s head calls a big surprise, at a mile and a half, in 2:33 4-5, beating Cudgel, with Mad Hatter third and Boniface fourth; Exterminator was last, dull and listless. Sir Barton was not in the field.

At Cleveland the national three-cushion billiard championship opened on Thursday, and Charles McCourt of Cleveland beat Cannefax of New York, the former champion, 50 to 41, in 69 innings; Byron Gillette of Buffalo beat Charles Otis of Brooklyn, 50 to 30. We have no later result.

Fred Faller of Boston, the national ten-mile champion, is the subject of a column in the Sun yesterday, which says he ran the second-fastest ten miles on record, the fastest by an American-born runner, and attacks the A.A.U. for carrying Pores’s record; the column calls Faller America’s hope in the distance events at the Olympic Games. Norman Ross, of the Illinois Athletic Club, set two world’s records in swimming at Honolulu last week, at 880 and at 1,000 yards. Syracuse won the Junior national cross-country championship at Van Cortlandt Park on Saturday.

Princeton beat Harvard at soccer, 5 to 0. S. M. Tracy beat R. McCord in the final of the October golf tournament at Essex Fells, 8 and 2. The Metropolitan A.A.U. has restored Bud Goodwin of the New York Athletic Club to amateur standing, pending the national body.

The Sun notes the death, at Dodgeville, Wis., after two years’ illness, of Evan Lewis, the original Strangler Lewis, who retired thirty years ago.

FOR THE YALE GAME 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 BIG GAMES. 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 to 6 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.