Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1910 — IN THE WORLD OF SPORT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IN THE WORLD OF SPORT

BiHy Papke, Whom Middleweights Are Sidestepping.

Since his. disgraceful fiasco with old Joe Thomas. Billy Papke, "the Illinois Thunderbolt," has made frequent and emphatic denials of any crookedness about the bout that went over the fifteen rounds by "mistake.” Billy has declared up and down that he will show the California public that he ran fight, and tight ou the square. He picked Jim (Firemant Flynn as his next opponent, but the bout was called off Then be made a date with Jimmy Howard, and Jimmy has just made It knowb that he will not enter the ring with the ■Thunderbolt." it looks as though middleweights were a little ieary of tackling the husky representative of the I’apke family in his wrath.

Cost of Running Baseball Club. Few people stop to consider the cost of keeping up a ball club. The expense goes on not only in the regular season, when- the gates are working for the club, but it is a big proposition in the spring training camp. Manager Hngbie Jennings of the Detroits recently estimated that the Tigers’ expense a week while in training ia just about SI,OOO. He remarked that that was only a beginning. "We have the hotel bill, the car to grounds, the baths and other like incidentals to consider, and this makes the figures mentioned by me rather conservative when you consider that we have twenty-four men in the camp.

“The Detroit club is liberal. It calculates on an outlay of from SIO,OOO to $15,000 (luring the training season. While the pay of the players does not start until April 15. the traveling expenses. hotel fare and other incidental* give a magnificent total and one that would appall were it not for the fact that a winning club is worth its weight in gold. "This outlay is very nearly evened up in the first series of the league race, but at that time the expenses keep running also. However, it Is not long before the spring debt is rubbed out. “Our salary list: Well, we pay out about SIOO,OOO a month for our playera. Add that>jto the other large expenses and you have some idea of the cost of a pennant winning ball club. A club has to take in some pretty sizable crowds target back the money spent And yet baseball is paying lh most towns.” 1 . - A Playing Managers Now Scarce. There’s nothing to it but that these are baseball’s big, important days and that inside of a very few years there won’t be a single player-manager left Clarke and Chance admit that they’ve bad enough—that the double work is too strenuous for them. Both hope to go to the bench next spring. It wasn’t so many years ago that there were very few bench managers. Now the majority of them operate from the coop—to wit: McGraw. Lake. Dahlen. Griffith. Mack. McAleer. Donovan. Stallings, Duffy. McGuire. Jennings and O’Connor. By the bye, notice there isn’t a single player-manager in the American league. Manager Fred Clarke says, that the slump his boys have taken is something that comes to all ball teams, and the team that cannot stand a little backwash now and then should never be classed as the real thing in basebail. Pessimistic Brown Fan Musings. What’s the matter with the St. Louis Browns? . One St. Louis man replies: "They can’t hit. They have no pitching staff worth the name at present They have a first class baseman who is. overanxious to make good. They have a star outfielder who reported six weeks late. They are demoralized through failure to get together at the start and through the. fact that not a pitcher on the staff can bold down the opposition. And if there’s 'anything else you can think of you might include that too.’’ Pitcher Vickers Wants to Catch. Baltimore may develop another Roger Bresnahan. Pitcher Rube Vickers’ dreams may materialize if the catching staff should get crippled. He has signified his intentions along that line and is patiently waiting for the opportunity to don the wind pad and the wire screen. Like Roger, he may get his chance, and this chance may be the development of another pitchercatcher.