Sport: Secession in the West?

The Pacific Coast League, bruised and spike-scarred from years of futile feuding with the major leagues, took the most drastic step since its founding in 1904. At a meeting in San Francisco last week, the League’s club owners voted to serve an ultimatum on the majors: unless freed from the player draft, P.C.L. would go outlaw, i.e., declare itself an independent organization with status equal to the National and American Leagues.

No one took the idea of a third major league too seriously. For one thing, there are obviously not enough first-class ballplayers to go around even for two major leagues. But it was undoubtedly true that P.C.L., an AAA (top classification) minor league, could improve its game both aesthetically and financially if it could force the big leagues to give up their privilege of drafting one player a year from each club at a flat price of $10,000.

The Coast League has long suffered from a combination of geography and pride. Such cities as San Francisco and Los Angeles are big league towns by population standards, but they have scant chance of getting a major league franchise until such time as the majors are willing to ship their valuable athletes around by plane from game to game. Meanwhile, as Western fans see it, the Pacific Coast cities are permanently condemned to second-grade baseball, played mainly by greenhorns and has-beens, while the big league teams in the East drain off such stars as Joe and Dom DiMaggio, Larry Jansen, Gene Woodling and Ferris Fain as fast as they come up. The draft has a double effect: a club lucky enough to develop two or three standout players in a season must usually sell them all to the highest bidders rather than risk losing one of them for the $10,000 price.

The San Francisco Seals, hard hit in recent years, are buried in eighth place this season, and Owner Paul Fagan, a bitter enemy of the draft, announced a fortnight ago that he was through, and ready to sell out. Fagan was in Honolulu last week, and in no mood to reconsider, when the owners took their action. Said he: “All the League actually did was to warn the majors. I think it was an idle threat. The majors will force them into some kind of compromise at the December meetings, and we’ll be back about where we were.” But other Coast League men angrily denied this. Said C. L. (Brick) Laws, owner of the Oakland team and another last-ditch foe of the draft: “We’re all living or dying together in this deal, and if the majors won’t go along, to hell with ’em.”