The New York Times, by Walter Wellesley (Red) Smith

By Red Smith

At 10 A.M. precisely, Pete Rozelle took his stance at the front of the room and addressed a microphone in patently reasonable terms: “Order in the court!” With those words the supreme being of professional football opened the National Football League's annual auction of human flesh, the draft of college boys, which Judge William P. Schweikert of the United States District Court has ruled patently unreasonable and illegal.

In spite of the court's finding, not to say in defiance of it, the roping and branding of educated livestock went on in the New York Hilton yesterday as usual, if not more so. More than ever before, it turned out to be a spectator sport accompanied by cheers, boos and catcalls just as if the New York Giants were losing another. Rozelle looked patently reasonable in a sincere suit with a tie of regimental stripes. Behind him was an electric scoreboard showing which team was laying claim to which immortal soul in what order, with a digital clock ticking off the 15 minutes allowed each slaver to make a choice.

In front of the commissioner, representatives of 26 teams sat at 26 desks, each connected by telephone to his home office where decisions would be made. Beyond the desks, fenced off by long tables covered with green baize and set end to end, were several hundred spectators. Most of them were young, all wore expressions so avid their gave the impression of panting, and two or three wore neckties.

Small Animal Sounds

The first of 442 bodies to be claimed, Rozelle announced, would be selected by the Atlanta Falcons. The words were hardly out of his mouth when he was handed a slip with a name inked in. “The Falcons,” he said, “select Steve Bartkowski, University of California.” It was the most dramatic line in the whole show, and it laid an egg. Every listener had known all along that Atlanta would go for the big quarterback from Berkeley.

“Next choice,” Rozelle said, “the Dallas Cowboys, from the New York Giants.” Four minutes later the Cowboys picked Randy White, a defensive end from Maryland. Somebody announced that he would be employed as a linebacker. Behind the green baize tables, the cognoscenti nodded knowingly.

After the Baltimore Colts picked Ken Huff, a North Caroline guard, Rozelle told the press: “Steve Bartkowski is on the way to New York. He will be available for interviews about 12:30.”

The Chicago Bears chose Walter Payton, running back from Jackson State, and a man in the front row booed. He wore glasses and a yellow shirt open at the throat and his lap was loaded with documents. He identified himself as a Chicago businessman in New York for a convention. He was disappointed that the Bears had not grabbed a lineman.

As the traffic in people went on, the gallery grew more and more crowded, more and more vocal. Each name brought gasps, hoots, small animal sounds. The crowd grew tense as the New York Jets got their turn, 12th in line. “Gentlemen,” Rozelle said, “we have a trade on this pick. The Jets have traded this pick for Billy Newsome, defensive end of New Orleans.” There were small noises suggesting disgust. The Saints used the turn to put the irons on Ohio State's offensive tackle, Kurt Schumacher.

Number One Feels Great

It took two hours and five minutes to complete the first round. By then the bulging gallery had shoved the green tables out into the main arena and a copy was breasting the tide. The tide was cheering, for now the Giants, having traded their first‐round turn for Craig Morton, were getting into the act. Vic Del Guercio, the Giants’ director of special projects, clutched a red telephone, the hot line to Pleasantville, where the club's best brains were whirring. They whirred for 7 minutes 35 seconds. Then:

“The Giants select Allen Simpson, offensive tackle, Colorado State.” An unknown. Horrified silence. Then hoots, howls, boos. Jim Kensil, the league's executive director, laid hold of the mike. He was patently disapproving.

“I'd like to remind the fans in the back that they booed Tom Mullen last year.” The guard from Southwest Missouri State is a good one.

Bartkowski arrived, a beautiful hunk of man with a lush blond hairdo, a symphony in blue—blue jacket, shirt, tie and eyes. He sat with great hands elapsed between knees and said it felt great to be Number One. “Off and on I dreamed of it a couple of times,” he confessed. He said he didn't understand “all the details” of Judge Schweikert's decision, but “it seems to me pro football would fall apart if there wasn't a draft.”

A history buff from Long Island nodded. “When they put it up to Nat Turner,” he said, “he said the cotton fields would go to seed if the abolitionists got their way.”

By Red Smith

Arbitration hearings on baseball salaries open today in New York, where the docket is relatively uncrowded because Charley Finley isn't around. Proceedings have been under way since Wednesday in San Francisco, where there is a glut of cases matching members of the Oakland A's against the feudal lord who owns them. It is expected that in a week or so, impartial referees in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago will have fixed the 1975 wages of 35 or 40 players. This is the second year of salary arbitration and the case load is larger than in 1974, partly because of Finley's reluctance to reward his employees for winning the world championship three times in a row and partly because awards last year ranged as high as Reggie Jackson's $60,000 increase (from $75,000 to $135,000.)

Monday was the deadline for submitting disputes to arbitration. By midnight that day, Eastern time, 38 players had chosen this means of settlement and another had agreed to his club's request for arbitration, but four settled “out of court,” reducing the total to 35 (compared with 29 last year.)

At 1.:10 A.M. Tuesday, still Eastern time, a 40th player telephoned Marvin Miller, executive director of the Players’ Association, and said he was going to arbitration. It took Miller 10 minutes to notify a representative of management, and management said no, sorry, the guy had missed the boat.

Now, the ground rules make Feb. 10 the deadline but do not Mention any hour. The player works for a California team and lives in California and it was 10:10 P.M. Monday by his time when he telephoned Miller. He has filed a grievance.

Drink Up, Gentlemen

If the owners play by their own rules, then this player has to win. The rules for, say, interleague trading set the deadline at midnight, local time. The owners always construe this to mean the time on their own watches, which they sometimes neglect to wind. If one party to a deal is in California, deadline is 3 A.M., Eastern time. If both are on Nantucket and it's 1 A.M., they say well, it's only 10 o'clock in Malibu.

When daylight saving was on, Philadelphia saloon-keepers used to calculate the legal closing hour by standard time. When meat on Friday was forbidden to Catholics, many a sinless soul allowed himself similar leeway Thursday night and Saturday morning. If it was all right for these types it's probably O.K. for club owners, but they've got to allow the player the same privileges.

In addition to the cases mentioned above, five or six clubs have submitted a total of 17 others for arbitration. When this happens, a six‐day period is allowed for the exchange of a final offer and a final demand. The player then has the option of accepting the final offer or putting it up to the arbitrator or just holding out in the good old-fashioned way.

The six‐day period is just running out, so there is no decision yet on how many of the 17 will get to arbitration. None submitted by clubs ever reached the hearing room last year.

Peaceful Coexistence, Sort of

The official score on last year's arbitration was Clubs 16, Players 13. That is, in 16 cases the referee wrote the owner's offer into the contract, in 13 he awarded the player the wage he sought. This was not necessarily a clear victory for management, however.

In most cases, the mere existence of arbitration machinery influenced owners to raise their offers. It also tended to moderate the players’ demands. Because the arbitrator must settle on one figure or the other with no compromise allowed, both sides recognize the wisdom of submitting realistic numbers. Often this brings them so close together that they settle out of court.

This year, for example, Finley settled with Vida Blue, Joe Rudi, Paul Lindblad and Gene Tenace on the brink of arbitration. It was estimated that Lindblad got about $55,000, Tenace a $7,000 raise to $52,000 and Rudi a $35,000 hike to $90,000. No figures were quoted on Blue. Ken Holtzman, first of the A's to make his pitch to the arbitrator, lost the argument, but it wasn't a shattering defeat. Last year the referee saw it Holtzman's way, raising him from $66,500 to $93,000. He is staying at that figure for 1975.

Between 1973 and 1974, the total major league payroll rose more than 12 per cent, about twice the year‐to‐year increase of recent times. This computation included players with long‐term contracts and those with less than two years of major league service who are not eligible for arbitration. Eliminate them, and the gains attributable to the arbitration process would be dramatic.

By Red Smith

RICHFIELD, Ohio, March 23—In the champion's dressing room deep in the catacombs of the Coliseum, Muhammad Ali sat relaxed on a folding chair placed in a corner where even the converging walls seemed to focus on him. His feet were wide apart, soles of the high white boxing shoes flat on the floor, and he lolled back with his hands folded in the lap of a white terrycloth robe. In something like 30 hours he would be defending the heavyweight championship of the world against Chuck Wepner in this big new hall that rises Mom farmlands runway between Cleveland and Akron. Most fighters like to rest on the eve of a bout but Muhammad Ali bears only a superficial resemblance to most fighters. This morning he ran 3½ miles, this afternoon he did his final turn in the gym. Now, awaiting the weigh‐in scheduled for 5:30 P.M., he spoke of many things with hardly a word about boxing.

“James Brown,” he said, and his hand touched the shoulder of the rock singer seated at his left. “James Brown, the greatest man, the greatest name, he transcends music like I transcend boxing and you'll never hear it from him. Me, I talk, I tell the world who Ali is, but James Brown says nothing. In Lima, Peru, they say, ‘You know James Brown, James Brown, James Brown?’ In Cairo, Egypt, New Delhi, Zaire, in Djakarta, Indonesia—”

“I can't pronounce that,” James Brown said. The singer was small beside the fighter, a dapper man with a glossy coiffure, a tidy mustache. He wore a leather jacket of shiny tan.

Man of His People

“In Djakarta, Indonesia,” Ali said, “all they ask me is do I know James Brown. They know his music—ha cha! roddyahchuh—.” He was on his feet now snapping his fingers, body swaying to a beat that only he could hear. The room was loud with laughter. He had an audience standing four or five rows deep in a semicircle completely surrounding his corner.

“Today James Brown said, ‘It was a privilege for me to get in the ring, with you—’ his pause was timed for effect—‘as your friend.’ ” Laughter exploded.

“Billy Eckstine,” said a man at the door, and the crowd parted to make room for that veteran of the music halls, bearded, bespectacled, smoking a pipe the size of a tenor saxophone. A charm on a chain about his neck looked like a polished black hand.

Ali waved a welcome as Eckstine took a chair next Brown, but the host was talking now about a tall young man on the fringe of the crowd. “The next heavyweight champion of the world,” Ali was saying, “Larry Holmes! When I started sparring with him I toyed with him. Now I win some rounds and he wins some. Larry Holmes, come over here where we can see you. I don't know if he's ready to go 15 rounds like that, but five or six rounds he can give anybody hell, I'm telling you—”

“Redd Foxx,” said the man at the door, and that comedian was ushered in. Grinning, he sat down next to Eckstine. It was beginning to look like a minstrel show with all the stars in line beside the interlocutor. A moment later the singer, Lloyd Price, joined the line‐up. He was a symphony in black—turtleneck, jacket, trousers.

Ali was glowing like crepes suzette. These were his people, his rooting section. “James Brown, Billy Eckstine, Redd Foxx,” he was chanting a litany, “Lloyd Price—how can I lose?”

“Ain't no way with the stuff you see,” Eckstine sang, and the audience howled.

Little Kid in Louisville

“In Ethiopia,” All said, “12 beautiful Ethiopian girls come in on this 747. They knew me. ‘Ali, Ali, Ali!’ and I gave 'em my autograph. I was proud. You was around when Sugar Ray was fighting, right? When he fought it was more than a bout, right? It was a happening!”

“For us blacks,” Eckstine said, “he gave us something to be proud of. And now it's you.” Ali inclined his head in acknowledgement. He had left his chair and was squatting to make small‐talk with five or six small boys, scrubbed and faultless in Sunday plumage.

“Quiet, everybody,” All commanded. “In 1957—how long ago is that? Eighteen years? I was a little kid in Louisville and it was Derby time—quiet, now, while I'm champion you've got to listen. There was this place the Top Hat, with maybe a hundred cats around outside and all the girls in their pretty furs and I heard this cat laughing—hee‐hee hee Ha‐ha‐ha! And it's Lloyd Price, takes a shot of whiskey like this—”

Holding an imaginary shot glass with thumb and two fingers, he tossed a potion off. “Hee‐hee‐hee! Got him another drink, and then that laugh again. Lloyd Price! Lloyd Price! I promised myself I would meet him some day.”

He turned to Redd Foxx. “Tell us a story.” ‘We're not on the air?” the comedian said. “All right, there was this drunk staggered into a Catholic church and sat down in a confessional—”

“Speak up,” All said. “Louder, so they can hear you.”

“Not at these prices,” Redd Foxx said. The champion of the world clutched his sides.

By Red Smith

WASHINGTON, April 24—Trial of the John Mackey case, in which the National Football League players challenge the so‐called Rozelle rule, is to be resumed Monday before Federal Judge Earl Larson in Minnesota. Meanwhile, collective bargaining between the players and their employers is proceeding at a halting pace, with one pair of subcommittees scheduled to begin work in New York on Tuesday and another pair due to meet here on Thursday. Finally, perhaps in early June after the Mackey case has been de‐ cided, Joe Kapp's antitrust damage suit against the N.F.L. will go on trial.

In other words, here they go again, taking up approximately where they left off last summer when the players gave up their strike and rejoined their teams in time to play out the 1974 season without a group contract.

They are not quite where they left off, however, for in the meantime Federal Judge William Sweigert in San Francisco ruled that the Rozelle rule, the standard player contract, the no‐tampering rule, the draft in its present form—in effect the provisions that make the reserve system work —were “patently unreasonable” and illegal.

Since making that decision last December, Judge Sweigert has modified some aspects of it but he has not “vacated” it, to use the rather imaginative verb employed by the club owners in a letter recently delivered to the players' union and released by the owners to the press. What the judge did, after conferring with counsel for both sides, was agree that evidence could be submitted regarding the reasonableness of the Rozelle rule. In his original decision lie had found the rule unreasonable per se and had seen no need for a trial.

The Light Turns Amber

As all players and owners and most fans know, the Rozelle rule provides that when a man plays out his option and sells his services to another team, that team must. compensate the player's original employer; and if the teams cannot agree on the amount of compensation, then the terms shall he dictated by Pete Rozelle, the commissioner. Since nobody can guess how exorbitant Rozelle's price might be, the fear of the unknown makes clubs leery of such deals.

In the Mackey case, filed when John Mackey was president of the National Football League Players Association, the union attacks the rule as a violation of antitrust law. (The Supreme Court has ruled that baseball is the only team sport exempt from antitrust restrictions.) Joe Kapp the quarterback whom Rozelle declared ineligible for refusal to sign the standard contract with the New England Patriots. Judge Sweigert's decision resulted from preliminary arguments in this case.

Opening negotiations April 4, the union referred to the “yellow caution light” turned on by Judge Sweigert and proposed leaving the Rozelle rule out of collective bargaining. Replying on April 17, the N.F.L. Management Council said Sweigert had “turned off any yellow light” by “vacating his previous decision,” and the owners suggested a substitute for the Rozelle rule. They called the substitute “final offer selection,” which would work this way:

By Any Other Name

Winston Hill plays out his option with the New York Jets and accepts an offer from New Orleans. Unable agree on compensation, the Saints make a final offer—a player and a sixth‐round draft choice. The Jets make final demand—two players and a first‐round draft choice. Rozelle would choose one proposition or the other.

Wouldn't this work out as happily as salary arbitration has worked in baseball? Wouldn't the Jets moderate their demand and the Saints make their top offer, each in the hope of winning Rozelle over?

“No,” says Ed Garvey, executive director of the players' union. “It might be if an independent arbitrator made the decision. But Rozelle is the owners' man and committed the status quo. In order to continue to restrict the movement of players from one team to another, he would have to find for the Jets. And, knowing what side he was on, the Jets could safely make the price exorbitant. It would work out exactly like the Rozelle rule.

“A basic argument by the owners supporting the Rozelle rule as reasonable is that the union has gone along with this arrangement in the past, and since the union serves the best interests of the players it follows that the Rozelle rule has been accepted as serving their interests. That isn't true. The agreement of 1968, which was the first reached by collective bargaining, and the agreement 1970 don't mention the Rozelle rule. That rule was one the issues in the strike.

“If we were to accent this substitute and the courts then agreed that the Rozelle rule was unreasonable, the owners could say, ‘Don't worry about that; we've already abolished that rule.’ That's why we don't want to bargain on the Rozelle rule. We'll let the courts decide.”

To repeat, here they go again.

By Red Smith

Now comes the time when sin grows respectable in the eyes of the little old lady in Dubuque, the fundamentalist in Pine Bluff and the stenographer in Milwaukee. This is the week of the Kentucky Derby, the only one in 52 when the instrument of Satan known as horse racing becomes a showpiece on the American sports scene, a happening of such note it can even distract attention from the spectacle of the Chicago Cubs leading the National League East. As Johnny Rotz, the former jockey, said recently of his boyhood in Illinois. “The only time the Decatur paper mentioned racing was to tell who won the Derby and how much money Eddie Arcaro had.” Already in Louisville or about to arrive there are winners of the California Derby, the Santa Anita Derby, the Florida Derby, the Louisiana Derby and New York's Wood Memorial, all of these mere preliminaries to next Saturday's eighth race at Churchill Downs. Also present is the winner of the Blue Grass Stakes, which may be more significant, for eight of the last 13 Kentucky Derby winners ran first or second in the Blue Grass.

“Jimmy,” said a visitor to the Downs five years ago this week, “what about the winner of the Blue Grass, Dust Commander?”

Jimmy Conway was training a steed named Dr. Behrman for that 1970 Derby and talking about the horses he feared most—Silent Screen, My Dad George, Corn Off the Cob, High Echelon and Personality. Now he turned a smile of fatherly indulgence upon his questioner. “Aw, pal,” he said, “if we have to worry about him we might as well give up.”

A Story Goes With It

Three days later Conway watched his colt finish 12th, beaten 18 lengths by Dust Commander, the winner. This may be worth remembering, for Dust Commander, now at stud in Japan, has a chestnut son named Master Derby who won the Blue Grass last Thursday over Wicked Park, a son of the 1966 Derby winner, Kauai King; Prince Thou Art and Sylvan Place, both of whom beat Foolish Pleasure in the Florida Derby; Avatar, first in the Santa Anita Derby, and four others.

Dust Commander was owned by a big‐game hunter named Robert E. Lehmann, who was off in the jungle shooting a tiger when the colt won the Blue Grass. Master Derby was bred by Lehmann and is owned now by the breeder's widow. Master Derby, never out of the money in 12 starts as a 2‐year‐old, went into the Blue Grass as winner of the Louisiana Derby. And thereby, as the poet says, hangs a tale.

At the time of World War I, an Oklahoma Indian named R. M. Hoots was racing a mare name Useeit on the bush tracks of the Southwest. She was obscurely and unfashionably bred, but for three‐quarters of a mile could run a hole in the wind, and to her owner she was the champion of champions. So great was his affection for her that when another horseman tried to claim her out of a race, Hoots couldn't let her go. For refusal to honor the claim, owner and mare were ruled off.

Unable to race, Hoots bought her a date with Colonel E.R. Bradley's fine stud, Black Toney, with profits from oil that had been discoverd on his Oklahoma real estate. In 1921 Useeit foaled a colt that Hoots named Black Gold, for the stuff gushing out of his land.

Useeit's Little Son

One version relates that Hoots, helping Useeit deliver her foal on a stormy night, contracted pneumonia and died. That may be unnecessarily romantic, but Hoots did turn in his dinner pail not long after Black Gold was born. He left instructions that the colt be raced highly, for no task could be too great for a son of Useeit.

Although Black Gold won one stakes as a 2‐year‐old, he opened at 100 to 1 in the winter book that Tom Kearney operated in St. Louis on the Kentucky Derby. That price dropped steadily as the colt cleaned up in New Orleans. After he won the Louisiana Derby the odds went to 4 to 1. At Churchill Downs he took the Derby Trial, and when he ran away from 18 pursuers in the 1924 Derby he paid $5.50 for $2. Kearney always said his future book lost $100,000 that year.

Black Gold was small but tough, and no more generous horse ever ran. He went on to win the Ohio and Chicago Derbys and finished third in a couple of others before he wore out. Several years later he fell into the hands of some people who patched him up and took him back to the Fair Grounds at New Orleans, where his star had risen. Trying to run there as he had run in his youth, he ran himself to death.

Today he lies buried in the infield at the Fair Grounds. In half a century since he won Derbies in Louisiana and Kentucky, no horse has completed the same double. No horse ever did it in half a century before him. In that respect, Black Gold stands alone. Up to this week, at least.

By Red Smith

New York City is tapped out like a broken horse player and nobody—not Abe Beame nor the town's smartest bankers nor the best fiscal brains in Albany and Washington—knows what to do about it. This helplessness high places is mystifying, for there is a simple solution obvious that it should have occurred to somebody in authority long before this. The city should take over loansharking, prostitution and narcotics traffic just as it has taken over gambling. We are assured by all reliable authorities that there is more than enough profit in these fields to make up the $641‐million deficit in next year's budget, and in the unlikely event that Mr. Beame still came up short, why, there are other untapped sources revenue such as labor racketeering and bank robbery.

Prudery should not stand in the way of solvency for the greatest city in the world. A few years ago when there were moral objections to the city's making book on the races, they were hooted down by Honest John Lindsay, the friendly bookie, and his chief sheet‐writer, Howard Samuels. Be realistic, they told us, gambling was a biological urge that legislation could not suppress; therefore, was it not desirable that the profits go to support schools, hospitals and deserving politicians rather than the criminal underworld?

Moreover, we were told, illegal gambling provided the treasury from which the underworld financed such activities as loan‐sharking, prostitution and dope‐pushing. History tells us that organized crime was starved to death New York starting at 10:52 A.M. on Holy Thursday, April 8, 1971, when the Offtrack Betting Corporation opened for business.

Go and Sin No More

Is it not incumbent upon enlightened city officials who eradicated the cancer of illegal horse playing to follow their own example and drive out the unlicensed Shylocks, pimps and pushers? Especially if it will ease Abe Beame's headache and save the jobs of firemen, cops and teachers?

American politicians have a single solution for fiscal crises—tax sin. However, in order to convert human frailty into cash, it is necessary to encourage widespread sinning. It doesn't do merely to pass a lottery law, you've got tempt the public with ads on buses and in newspapers and gussie up the lottery with gimmicks called New Chance, Summer Special and The Colossus.

Offtrack betting has required equally insistent and expensive promotion. Although we were told that the public's consuming passion for gambling was producing underworld profits running into hundreds of millions, the city made only $3,135.634 out of bookmaking in 1971, OTB's first year. “Bet more!” the ads have clamored ever since. “Bet till it hurts! Come on, suckers, don't you want to get rich?” Exhorting and expanding, OTB has built up business steadily, without ever approaching the volume its proponents promised.

One reason for the city's financial bind is that making hook on the races has been nowhere near so profitable as expected. Citizens were told it would produce $200‐million a year for the city. Last year it reached $54,070,647. Instead of $800‐million for four years, OTB has returned $112.3‐million. That's a gap of $687.7‐million, which is bigger than the current budget gap.

Racing dates have been extended to generate additional business. The 1974 thoroughbred season closed on Jan. 4, 1975, and Aqueduct was dark only until Feb. 24. Exotic forms of betting have been introduced because the take‐out on them is 25 per cent instead of the normal per cent. Sunday racing starts at Belmont next week. What next?

Who Mentioned Yankee Stadium?

Well, Paul Screvane, successor to Howard Samuels at OTB, is echoing his predecessor's argument in favor of handling action on baseball, football, basketball and other sports in addition to racing. Paul would like to put in something like “Pick It,” the state‐operated numbers game New Jersey. The New York State Racing and Wagering Board, which has already approved an arrangement whereby New York races will be televised into Connecticut betting parlors, is urging that Saratoga races in August piped into Aqueduct, where mutuel windows would service players who can't get up to the Spa.

This week Robert Abrams and Percy Sutton, borough presidents of the Bronx and Manhattan, plumped for legalization of dog racing with pari‐mutuel betting. They ran a couple of mutts across Bryant Park in a demonstration.

“We wanted New Yorkers to see the beauty of these great animals,” said Abrams, patting a greyhound over its pea‐sized brain. In a forecast reminiscent of the promises made for OTB, Abrams said 100 nights of dog racing would produce “at least” $17.5‐million. Whatever business the dogs did would, of course, be reflected in reduced revenue from Yonkers and Roosevelt Raceways. As the racing and wagering board points out in its annual report:

“New York's harness tracks found themselves in a serious struggle for the entertainment dollar, the competition including overlapping sports seasons, functioning mostly night, New York City's standard superb variety of entertainment, prime‐time TV. Monday night football and the spread of offtrack betting facilities with the telephone making race betting possible in every home.”

“It might help pay for Yankee Stadium.” Abrams said of dog racing. Maybe right now he shouldn't have reminded New Yorkers about that $50‐million and up they're spending on a playground for George Steinbrenner.

By Red Smith

Baseball's latest dip into the roily waters of collective bargaining is a month or two old, and so far the owners have given no useful answers to any of the proposals put forward by the players. That is, the men who own baseball have not said yes, no, or we'll see. However, another “negotiating” session comes up the day after tomorrow and perhaps they will say something then.

Chances are they will not respond directly to the players’ suggestions but will come up with counter‐offers not necessarily bearing on the issues the players have raised. Some of these issues are touchy, especially that stubborn, unlaid ghost, the reserve system. Neither side wanted these matters disclosed prematurely or debated in the press, but some of the details have leaked out. It is no longer a secret that the players have submitted a plan that would so modify the reserve system as to take most of the curse off that feudal institution without upsetting competitive balance in the league. It would limit the period in which a club could own an employe outright, without enabling big spenders like Calvin Griffith and Horace Stoneham to hire away all the star players from poor owners like John Galbreath and Tom Yawkey.

Under the plan, a player would be bound to the team holding his contract for five years instead of life. Five years in organized baseball, that is, not necessarily in the majors. After that he could become a free agent by submitting a written request within 10 days after Feb. 1.

Soak the Rich

In a salary dispute, this would give the player the option of holding out, going to arbitration or trying for more money from another employer. However, it isn't always money or the lack of it that makes a player unhappy. Maybe the owner calls him “Boy” and lays a blue Cadillac on him whether he wants one or not. Neither holding out nor arbitration can help him there, and under the reserve system today he has no other alternative.

This brings us to the bugaboo always raised to defend the reserve system if players were free to choose their employers, all the best would pick the glamour spots, New York and Los Angeles, destroying competitive balance. This moldy argument overlooks the fact that some individuals, not necessarily deficient in judgment, prefer Pittsburgh New York and Secaucus, N.J., to Los Angeles, but never mind that.

Dealing with the bugaboo, the players propose that all those becoming free agents in any year be tossed into a pool, and no team be allowed to hire more than 5 per cent of them, unless the team has lost more than 5 per cent to that pool. In that event, the team could hire as many players as it lost.

This would dispose of the argument that if it were not for the reserve system the rich clubs would wind up with all the best players. That never was a valid argument, anyway. The Yankees, who dominated the game for so many years, were never the richest club nor the wildest spenders. They were best because the men who ran them, Ed Barrow and then George Weiss, did their jobs better than anybody else.

Escape From Sin

Incidentally, this is the players’ plan, not Marvin Miller's. In baseball, as in other industries, the bosses tend to blame the union leader for everything the union does. In this case Miller, executive director of the Players’ Association, had the membership propose changes in the two agreements that expire next winter—the one covering pensions and the basic agreement that deals with everything else. During the All‐Star break the union's executive board reviewed the members’ suggestions and approved some, which were then submitted to the owners.

Besides recommending modification of the reserve system, the players want to change the draft of free agents from college, high school and the sandlots. They want to limit the draft to 72 players, three times the number of teams in the majors, with no team permitted to draft more than three men.

Further, if a free agent were drafted by a club like Oakland, whose won‐lost record is one of the eight best in the majors, he would be allowed to dicker with all eight teams in that top group, not just the A's. A young man drafted by Kansas City could negotiate with all eight clubs that had finished in the middle bracket, and one drafted by San Diego could talk business with the eight teams with the poorest records.

Limited to three rounds, the draft would take only those regarded as the brightest prospects. The teams could, of course, hire as many other kids as they chose.

It would improve the bargaining position of the free agent, who now comes out of Benedict Arnold High in Flat River, Mo., and is told he must play for the Milwaukee Brewers or nobody. This is scandalously immoral, and the owners should be grateful to the players for showing them the way out of their iniquity. They wouldn't be.

By Red Smith

The New England Patriots walked out on strike yesterday while the other players in the National Football League tried to decide whether to follow suit or to instruct their representatives to keep on butting their heads against the stone wall called the National Football League Management Council. Negotiating Committee. Most were expected to choose the latter course not because there any valid reason to believe management will bargain in good faith but because they prefer almost any alternative, no matte. how unpromising, to a repetition last summer's costly strike.

This probably means the owners will push on with their campaign to bust the players' union until they succeed or are brought to heel by the courts. they succeed in busting the union first, they will consider it a victory, even the courts subsequently find them in violation of antitrust law. In that event, they would have to alter their business methods to conform with the law, but at least they would be rid of Ed Garvey, Kermit Alexander, Bill Curry and those other Bolsheviks who have been trying to tell them how to run the game they own.

The union is weaker than it was a year ago because the strike and extended litigation like the 55‐day trial of the so‐called Mackey case virtually emptied the treasury. There has been no contract between union and ownership since Feb. 1, 1974, and without a contract the owners refuse to deduct union dues from salaries. The player representative on each team has to dun his fellows for $300 annually.

“If dues come in as we anticipate,” says Garvey, executive director of the union, “the treasury would be healthy by late November. If not, then I guess the union will be busted.”

Hawing It Both Ways

The owners' attitude toward the union is expressed in their bargaining tactics. In last year's strike, money was secondary and “freedom issues” were paramount. Players wanted the right to sign with the team of their choice after fulfilling their contracts and wanted veterans to have veto power over trades. At the bottom of the dispute was the Rozelle rule, not written by Pete Rozelle, the commissioner. It provides that when a man plays out his contract and goes to another team as a free agent, that team must compensate the team losing him, and if they can't agree, the commissioner must fix the price. Fear that the cost may be exorbitant makes teams reluctant to hire players on those terms.

Calling the demands “anarchy,” management insisted that all issues boiled down to money, and refused to negotiate unless freedom issues were taken off the table. At length, the union agreed to leave the. Rozelle rule to the courts and bargain on other matters. The strike ended when the players accepted a “cooling out” recess that has lasted for a year.

The Rozelle rule was already being challenged in a suit brought by the former quarterback, Joe Kapp, and in the Mackey case, filed by the union when John Mackey was its president. In the Kapp case. Federal Judge William T. Sweigert found the Rozelle rule “patently unreasonable.” Federal Judge Warren J. Ferguson has said it violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. Still another court deems the life of this and other restrictions “all but over,” and a decision is still awaited in the Mackey case.

For obvious reasons, management no longer wishes to leave the Rozelle rule to the courts, if it ever did. It now de Emerson Boozer carrying a picket sign at the Jets' camp last year. mands that the union bargain on the rule and has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the union for “refusal” to do so. This is known as having it both ways.

In effect, management has been telling the union: “You must overturn these court rulings and legitimize the Rozelle rule by bargaining on it. If you don't, you get no contract, no dues checkoff, no preseason pay.”

Guarantee of Illegality

On Aug 29, the Management Council, announced that the union had “placed a serious new roadblock in the way of a collective bargaining agreement.” The roadblock was a letter from Garvey and Kermit Alexander, the union president, reiterating the union position that the Rozelle rule was illegal but promising to consider any proposal in that area which antitrust counsel would sanction.

“I guarantee,” Tex Schramm, president of the Dallas Cowboys, had said during negotiations Aug. 25, “that any proposal we submit will be deemed illegal by your people.”

“This was in Chicago,” Garvey says, “and at 7 the next morning I had a call from a newspaperman. He said, ‘I understand you are ready to drop the Mackey suit and discuss the Rozelle rule.’ That's when Kermit and I sent the letter.”

Any proposals on the table Sept 1 were to be submitted to the union membership for approval. After Garvey and Alexander restated the union position, Management Council wrote that “we intended to put a new complete proposal on the table” but now had none to submit because “we could trot be a party to an agreement you had pre-renounced.”

So on Sept. 1, the owners' proposal of July 23 was submitted to the players. It leaves the Rozelle rule unchanged. At last count, 10 players had voted yes, 868 no. Out went telegrams to 26 locker rooms asking what the players wanted to do next.

By Red Smith

There were several major differences between the 1974 and 1975 strikes by players in the National Football League, and one aspect that was unchanged. In neither case was money a prime factor.

Last year and this year the players struck over working conditions, called “freedom issues” in 1974 and the Rozelle rule this fall. In other words, they were fighting for the same cause both times. The most important difference was that last year's strike was supported by the members of all 26 teams, at least at the outset, and by hardly anybody else, whereas this one was backed by a minority of the players and practically everybody else except, of course, the owners.

This reflects a growth of understanding among the public, a growth of selfishness among the players and no change in the mulish arrogance of the men who own the football. In the intervening months, the public has discovered what the players are fighting for and realized that their cause is just. Many players, discouraged and disillusioned by the failure of the first strike, have said, “The hell with union solidarity and the united front, I'm taking care of Number One.” And the owners have said, “We've got them on the run now; let's tighten the screws.”

Last year the newspaper that did a conscientious job of presenting the players' side was an exception, and if the union had a friend on radio or television his voice was not heard here. Again and again, sports writers with some mysterious pipeline to the public told us that the fans were sick and tired of the greed of the overpaid brats who play this game.

The Globe's Second Thoughts

If Terry Bledsoe, press agent for the management council, subscribes to a clipping service, he may be in a position to contradict the statement that press coverage of the recent dispute was more enlightened and fair. Certainly that was true of the coverage that came to attention here. The Boston Globe offers a case in point.

Last year the editorial page of The Globe, not the sports section, declared that “while the parties to the dispute are making speeches about freedom and the future of the game, it is the fans who are bearing and will continue to bear the brunt of this foolishness.” Conceding that the reserve system did restrict the players' freedom, the editorial suggested that “they can always try their hand in another business, but even under present limitations most of the players are enjoying enough fame, fortune and financial security to compensate them for the restrictions under which they work.”

Something has happened to the antediluvian mind that saw freedom and human dignity as foolishness. “The socalled Rozelle rule,” said a Globe editorial the other day, “is an illegal block . . . never mind that your run of the mind pro footballer may earn as much in one afternoon as the rest of us earn in several months of afternoons and evenings . . . the Rozelle rule, if applied to all of us, would mean that even a ribbon clerk at, say, Filene's, couldn't switch jobs and go to Jordan Marsh when his contract ran out unless Jordan Marsh gave Filene's, say, a seamstress and two tailors in exchange. And this would be so even if Filene's had told the ribbon clerk he would henceforth have to sweep out the store in addition to selling ribbons. If the ribbon clerk then said this amounted to involuntary servitude, that Jordan Marsh wouldn't trade even an apprentice elevator operator for him, we don't see how we could say him nay if he then went on strike. And that's how the Rozelle rule works.

Promises to Keep

This time the players' side was presented by many voices, including Tom Wicker's in a perceptive column on the op‐ed page of The New York Times. This time, though, the players who complained about an unsympathetic press a year ago weren't reading the papers. When the New England Patriots went out on strike, only four of the 25 other teams followed suit. The rest either weaseled out of a decision or voted to scuttle the strike, encouraging the owners in their campaign to bust the union.

Now it will be seen whether the owners will sense this swing in sentiment among press and public, and begin to bargain in good faith. Up to now they have not been distinguished for sensitivity.

They have been prepared all along to make proposals that they think would be more acceptable to the players than those presented thus far, but they have not done so because they were trying to browbeat the union into compromising on the Rozelle rule. Then they could go to the courts that consider the Rozelle rule illegal and say: “This was accepted by the union in collective bargaining at arm's length, so it must serve the best interests of the players.” They have been using that argument in court, without impressing one Federal judge.

The owners have promised to submit a new proposal tomorrow. The players called off the strike for two weeks because William J. Usery, head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, assured them that he believed the proposal would be “meaningful.” Usery knows the people he is dealing with because he was in the thick of last year's aborted bargaining. Now he has put his word and his reputation on the line. Greater faith hath no man.