Traded Hornsby

Judge Emil Fuchs,* a paunchy and genial onetime Manhattan magistrate, is the President and owner of the Boston "Braves," one of the worst baseball teams in the National League. Last week he did two things that aroused the excitement of baseball enthusiasts.

1) He traded Rogers Hornsby, famed second baseman and manager of the Braves, to the Chicago Cubs for about $200,000 and five less famous players.

2) He announced that when the season opened next spring, he would be the manager of the Boston Braves.

The manager of a baseball team is generally a onetime professional ballplayer; it has always been supposed that he must be familiar with the strategies of the game and have played it well. Sometimes, like Hornsby, he plays and manages at the same time; usually he directs his team from the field bench. Judge Fuchs is not a professional, not even an able, baseball player. Even if he were, he is too good-natured and kindly to subdue curt umpires and angry, ignorant players. For him to be a manager was absurd and astonishing; he admitted that he would hire Johnny Evers, once a famed player, to be his assistant manager.

By instinct, training, and disposition, Rogers Hornsby is a superlatively good baseball player. Yet of late he has not stayed long on any "club." Three years ago he was made manager of the St. Louis Cardinals; they won the pennant and he was traded to the New York Giants, where he was captain and assistant manager; last year he was traded to Boston where he squabbled with onetime manager Jack Slattery, a native of the city, and supplanted him as manager. Because Bostonian baseball fans were annoyed at this and because Rogers Hornsby demanded $50.000 yearly, Judge Fuchs sold him. Hornsby likes to bet on horse races; he is imperious and impudent and in Chicago he will be neither captain nor manager but merely second baseman. Next winter again there may be hornswoggling for Hornsby.

* Not to be confused with Emil Fuchs, painter and sculptor, of Manhattan.