Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 194, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1917 — MONEY KEEPS MANAGER M’GRAW IN FRONT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MONEY KEEPS MANAGER M’GRAW IN FRONT

A good dash of fortune, scrambled In with the real ability that is evident is as much responsible as anything in the success of John J. McGraw. Touted a wonder as a baseball manager, It Is doubtful if McGraw would be able to produce the same results that have characterized the efforts., of several other big league managers If he didn’t have the wealth of his backers to draw from, leaving him free to choose at will from among hundreds of ball players. The cases of Eddie Rousch and Dick Rudolph are perhaps the most predominant. Rousch is near the top among National league batsmen. Rudolph is Boston’s most effective pitcher and was one of the main reasons why the Braves were able to battle their Way to a National league championship and a subsequent world’s championship. Both these men once were Giants. Rousch was kept mainly doing bench duty, while Rudolph scarcely got that far. Milton Stock is another example; Fred Merkle is a fair idea of a ball player discarded as a has-been, and who is doing great work. There arq

many others. McGraw has cast them aside to make room for men he thought would do better with the men making up his team. He has been successful in winning pennants and has to his credit one world’s championship, but if he would gather the stars he has let slip from his grasp and form them into one team the chances are he would have a machine that would be able to crush the present galaxy of stars with which he is trying to fret his way to a pennant A little more than a year ago'McGraw set out to gather in a surplus of stars with which he threatened to make a runaway race of the National league pennant. Among these was Hans Lobert. Lobert didn’t even finish the season and Is used now only as a pinch McGraw considers him finished, yet it is only a brief stretch of time since he went into a breach and won a game for the Giants by the brilliance of his fielding and hitting. It is one thing to have money behind and still another to be able to build a championship team.

SOME STARS M’GRAW HAS LET GO BY.