At the present date of writing I have been unable to secure full and exact confirmation of the charges made against the C. H. and L. team, but I feel perfectly confident that the executive committee, doubtless acting under the advice of the B.A.A. and of graduate members of the schools, made a full and careful investigation, and had thorough proof of the guilt of the player referred to. An extenuating circumstance seems to have been that the Captain of the C. H. and L. team attended the Latin School, and the alleged non-member claimed to attend the High-School. The Captain doubtless argued that he took the man's word for his connection with the High-School, and the committee no doubt seized upon the argument as a very sound pretext to separate the schools, probably ruling that although a Captain ought to know positively whether or not his players are bona fide students, it is perhaps too much to require him to be familiar with the roster of more than one institution.
The punishment inflicted upon the players—if the charges have been proved valid—strikes me as being the best possible solution of a very unpleasant situation. It frequently happens that players who are not strictly amateurs get on amateur teams. We hear of this continually. It is always very hard to find out whether the Captain of the team or any of the other players were aware at the beginning, or at any time, of this player's actual standing. It is impossible to prove whether or not such knowledge existed. But if you make the penalty for such infringement of the law so severe that every Captain and every player will make it his business—for his own sake—to know all about every other man on his team, you will be purifying sport at a rapid rate.
It is useless, unwise, and unnecessary to expel an entire school from an athletic organization because there was a non-amateur on that school's football team. That does not help the cause of sport. On the contrary, it injures it. But if you place the responsibility upon the players themselves, upon the men who are looking forward hopefully to a successful career among other amateurs, then every one of these fellows will be looking out for his own skin, and the moment he hears there is something crooked about his companion he will investigate for himself, and if he finds there are good grounds for suspicion he will soon see that the evil is remedied.
This may sound as though I were advocating a system where selfishness rather than a just sense of honor must be the controlling motive; but that is not the idea I intend to convey. No one recognizes more fully than I do how greatly young men dislike to put themselves to any trouble, especially in matters of this kind. I fear the average strictly honest sportsman on a school team would do nothing to rid his eleven or nine of a player whom he was fairly sure had no right to be there, simply because it would necessitate his putting himself to some trouble, and possibly subject himself to some unpleasantness.
It is for this reason that I so strongly approve of any honest incentive that can be given to youthful energy, even if it has to work through selfishness and "the first law of nature." Therefore I repeat that the plan adopted by the executive committee is most excellent. It is like cutting out a cancer. By removing all the players who were in company with the guilty man they get rid of the possible good with the surely bad, but they make room for new material that will certainly profit by the lesson given to its predecessors. It seems to me that if this year there is found on any New York interscholastic baseball team any player who has no right to play, as was the case last year, the wiser method will be to blacklist the whole team rather than to expel the school from the association. Then, the following year, the school body will see to it that there are no dishonest fellows wearing the school colors on the field of honest sport.
The proposed in-door track-athletic meeting, to be held next month at the Madison Square Garden under the auspices of the New Manhattan Athletic Club, will be the first real interscholastic in-door meeting that has ever been held in this city, and will consequently establish in-door interscholastic records for the New York I.S.A.A. At present the in-door scholastic records for this city are as follows:
Sixty-yard Dash—6 3-5 seconds, P. W. Simpson, Barnard, 1893; Junior, 7 2-5 seconds, D. M. Armstead, Berkeley, 1895, and G. Mayne, Barnard, 1895.
Seventy-yard Dash—7 4-5 seconds, T. H. Hall, Jun., Yale, 1895; H. Moeller, Columbia Grammar, 1894; H. L. Patterson, Wilson and Kellogg, 1892; boys under fifteen years, 8 4-5 seconds, P. W. Simpson, Barnard, 1894; R. Thompson, Columbia Grammar, 1894; boys under thirteen years, 9 seconds, G. G. Soper, Berkeley, 1894.
Seventy-five-yard Dash—Boys under fifteen years, 8 3-5 seconds, T. H. Hall, Jun., Yale, 1892.
One-hundred-yard Dash—10 3-5 seconds, T. H. Hall, Jun., Yale, 1895; Junior, 11 1-5 seconds, W. Wilson, Barnard, 1895.