POOR SALESMANSHIP

Professional baseball has again covered itself with mud. Two players have tried to discredit the sport which they represent, for the sake of victory. What effect this incident will have on the national game is hard to predict. The wound which the White Sox inflicted in 1919 may prove still sensitive to the salt of scandal.

Baseball, unfortunately, is still a business. Victory means profit; and, as long as this continues to be the case members of this business, as of any other, who are less troubled than their colleagues by ethical scruples will resort to underhand means to win.

Baseball, as a whole, should no more suffer for the acts of two individuals than should any other business. As soon as the American public realized that its national sport is not a sport, that it is paying men to handle a baseball and a bat cleverly, and that it is giving them bonuses for winning, baseball scandals will be accepted as calmly as bankruptcies in Wall Street.