Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 198, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1918 — LARGE SALARIES TO BE CUT NEXT SEASON [ARTICLE]

LARGE SALARIES TO BE CUT NEXT SEASON

Baseball Stars Won’t Get Huge Amounts for Services, w Fat Wartime Contracts Will Be Visible No More and Preference Wil! Be Given to Players Returning From War.

There will be n house cleaning in baseball next spring, if the game comes back then, but it may not be the kind of house cleaning that Ban Johnson prophesied. The present national commission may or mtfy not be put in power again. There may be or may not be a new head to that commission, there may be a new leader of the National league, and there may even be a new leader of the American league. All these things are possible, but what is most probable of all is a reorganization' and a regrading of salaries. The fat wartime contracts will be visible no more. Valiant athletes who drew from $5,000 to SB,OOO while their clubs lost heavy money will be offered from $2,500 to $4,000. If there U any preference in awarding the big money, it Will be shown to men returning from the war, as it is felt that they could not help their departure, and gave up large incomes cheerfully to serve the nation.

Superfluous agents, extra financial managers, etc., will be lost to view. Baseball will simply start in again and will try to rebuild its shattered fortunes along sane and economic lines. This comes unofficially, but none the less correctly, through the office of the national commission. Agents of the Arizona Copper league, which comprises the six Arizona cities of Bisbee, Prescott, Phoenix, Oakland, Jerome and Tombstone, are on their way east to grab big league players. Forty Pacific coast men have gone in with these six clubs, but the promoter? want major leaguers, too. Their offer is blunt and direct: Six dollars a day straight wages to copper miners, and the ball players will have to earn the money, working eight honest hours a day; $8 extra to ball players with games Saturday and Sunday. The jumps are mostly by automobile, and the population has gone wild over the game.