The Indianapolis Journal

SOME PROMPT ACTION NEEDED.
The Indianapolis Management Has Allowed Its Team to Be Outclassed.

A minor league team never started out with better prospects than did the Indianapolis baseball club this season, but those prospects are being killed about as rapidly as possible. It is too bad that such is the case and it would seem as if there ought to be some way to build up the team but nobody connected with the management appears able to make the right move. As has frequently been remarked, this city, with a team able to stand up among the first four in the race, would prove one of the best, if not the best, in the Western League. It is not an exacting class of patrons that attend the ball games here. On the contrary, they are patient and ever ready to forgive and forget, and are loyal to the core, but they cannot stand everything. They have gone on this season, hoping against hope, only to see the team that misrepresents a good city defeated time after time, and by discreditable scores. It is an actual disgrace to a city to have a ball team bearing its name give such miserable exhibitions as has Indianapolis in many of the championship games this season. The club has already become the laughing stock of the league, and is lamentably outclassed by the other clubs with the single exception of Detroit. There is little hope that it will win a single game on the present trip, and such a record will not be calculated to keep in line even the "regulars" who never desert their baseball colors.

The trouble is that in the start the mistake was made of holding the Western League too cheaply. If Indianapolis had made a poor showing in the exhibition games it would have been better for the club and the city. The teams that were not stronger than Indianapolis at the beginning soon spent enough money to make themselves formidable. This city and Detroit have floundered along with clubs that have put up ragged, wretched ball and fairly earned the discreditable positions in the race they now occupy. If it is necessary to pay two or three big salaries in order to get good players there should be no hesitancy in doing so. It is certainly more profitable to expend a little more money with every assurance of solid returns than to drift along and see the club wrecked on the shore of bad attendance, as it surely will be if new players are not taken in at once, not makeshifts, but men who can push the team into a winning gait.

The Journal has repeatedly urged that a captain be secured, something the club has never yet had. Its utter lack of a playing head has cost it runs, and doubtless games. Something should be done without further delay to remedy this and the other shortcomings. Minneapolis secured Perry Werden by paying him $250 a month, after he had refused Milwaukee's offer of $225. Indianapolis can afford to pay as much as any other club for its players, and there is no attempt on the part of six of them, so it is said, to keep within the salary limit. Indianapolis and Detroit are observing this dead-letter provision of the Western League constitution, and the result is apparent by a glance at the standing of the clubs. That is a silent but eloquent homily on the fallacy of the salary limit in this organization. Milwaukee will not remain long at the foot. It must be remembered that Cushman's players have done little playing since the team was strengthened, the weather having interfered with their games right along. They will be heard from in due time. Grand Rapids pays her four crack hitters, Wright, Carroll, Caruthers and George close to $1,000 a month. The remaining nine or ten players, among whom are Pinckney and Wheelock, ex-Leaguers, draw an aggregate of considerably more than $600 a month, as everybody knows. Two or three good, hard hitters and old Leaguers like Werden, Crooks, Carroll or Caruthers, would help Indianapolis out wonderfully. The management should let go some money, if necessary, and get some men who can play ball.

Manager Sharsig telegraphed last night that he had given Snyder and McTammany their five days' notice. These men have been released about every twenty-eight minutes during the past two weeks, and the announcement is therefore nothing of a surprise. He does not say that he has replaced them with anything better, but it is to be hoped so. He is after several players, but thus far there is no indication that any of them have been secured. President Brush, of the Cincinnati team, could better afford to let Cross pitch for Indianapolis than to keep him idle in that city. By loaning him to the Hoosier club Cincinnati would benefit all around. Cross would be in fast company enough to keep him in good pitching condition, would be off the Cincinnati pay roll and could be telegraphed for as easily here as anywhere. As it is he gets no actual practice and is on the bench, useless to himself and to the club. The Cincinnati president went to St. Louis last night and said he would see about sending "Connie" Murphy to the Hoosiers' relief, but was noncommittal about Cross. Sharsig's men play their last game at Minneapolis to-day, and then go to Sioux City for three games.