Baseball Business

After the World Series and before the spring training camps open, U. S. baseball fans find little to read about their favorite sport. In December they usually have a brief bright spot when the businessmen who run baseball get together to swap players. This year's meetings were not as bright as usual.

The minor-league convention was held last fortnight in Milwaukee. Most important news was that Manager Jimmy Dykes of the Chicago White Sox and Manager Mickey Cochrane of the Detroit Tigers had worked a trade: Pitcher Vernon Kennedy, Infielder Tony Piet and Outfielder Dixie Walker of the White Sox for Outfielder Gerald Walker, Third Baseman Marvin Owen and Catcher Mike Tresh of the Tigers. Consensus was that Jimmy Dykes had slipped one over on his old teammate in the biggest deal of the year.

Then the major-league overlords who had been bartering at the minor-league conclave moved on to Chicago last week for the major-league meetings. The National League promptly proceeded to make no news by re-electing President Ford Frick for three years at $27,000 per year. To the meetings of the overlords went U. S. baseball manufacturers to discuss balls of varying degrees of deadness, which had been tried out last season. The National League, which thought the American League was bound to follow its choice, forthwith voted to adopt the No. 4 ball, one degree deader than the ball used last year, on the theory that a deader ball would curtail the American League's superior batting. But the American League, thinking of the large gate receipts produced by its slugfests with the lively ball, used by both leagues since 1934, voted to retain the "rabbit" ball. In the 1938 World Series the competing teams will use the ball of the home team.

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