TAFT OFFERED BASEBALL JOB

Former President May Be Sole Member of National Commission.

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. NEW YORK, Nov. 23 [1918] ? Former President William Howard Taft has been offered the position of sole member of the National Commission of the National and American Leagues, according to an announcement here tonight by H. N. Hempstead, president of the New York Nationals, and Harry Frazee, president of the Boston Americans. Mr. Taft Is said to be considering the offer.

Acceptance by Mr. Taft would mean the passing of the present National Commission, which is composed of the two league presidents and a third member and, it is said, would shear Ban B. Johnson, president of the American League, of the powers which have earned for him the title of "baseball dictator." The offices of the new "one-man commission" would be in New York.

The offer to Mr. Taft is said to have been made without the knowledge of Western presidents of the two leagues. All of the Eastern club presidents are said to have approved the offer, and this would give the originators of the idea sufficient votes to carry the proposal.

Only Two Members Now. The National Commission at present has only two members, former Governor John K. Tener of Pennsylvania having relinquished his seat on the commission when he recently resigned the presidency of the National League. Mr. Johnson and August Herrmann, president of the Cincinnati Nationals, are the present members. John A. Heydler, acting president of the National League, sat as a member of the commission in arranging for the 1918 world's series, but he sat under special authorization from the American League.

The conference between Messrs. Taft, Hempstead and Frazee was held in this city today and Mr. Taft took the offer under consideration without comment. His reply is not expected for several days. The proposition was considered in a general way with the details to be worked out if Mr. Taft accepts, as the two club presidents appear to be hopeful he will. No salary was mentioned. Neither Frazee nor Hempstead would state what other American or National League clubowners had been canvassed in the matter, but intimated that the proposition, had met with hearty support among a majority of the Eastern magnates who had been approached.

Taft refused the offer. Heydler became permanent NL president, making him automatically the third member of the National Commission. One year later, the Black Sox World Series created baseball's biggest scandal. This led to Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis being named baseball's first commissioner in 1920.

The 1914 Boston National League team, called the "Miracle Braves," staged one of the greatest comebacks in any sport. On July 19th, the Braves resided in last place, 15 1/2 games behind the New York Giants. They then won 51 of their next 67 games for an astounding .761 winning percentage!

The Braves hosted the Giants in a Labor Day doubleheader with the teams in a flatout tie for the lead. Because the Braves home field, the South End Grounds, seated only 11,000, the club obtained permission of the crosstown Red Sox to play the doubleheader at 35,000-seat Fenway Park, then in its third year of use and often called "American League Park" at that time. The DH drew 74,163 fans. Boston won the morning game, 5-4. However, the Giants took the afternoon nightcap 10-1 to pull back into a tie. The next day, an overflow crowd of 17,000 saw the Braves take the rubber game 8-3 on their home field to retake first place, which they never relinquished. They won the pennant by 10 1/2 games!

The Red Sox agreed to host the Braves' World Series home games. (The Red Sox had played the 1912 World Series at their brand new stadium.) After beating the Athletics in the first two games in Philadelphia, the Braves won Game 3 5-4 in 12 innings before 35,520 at Fenway. Another 34,365 saw the Miracle team complete the four-game sweep, 3-1.

After the season, the Braves started construction of a new stadium. While awaiting its completion, they played their 1915 home games at Fenway until August 18, when Braves Field, baseball's first 40,000-seat stadium, opened. The Braves played there until 1953 when the franchise moved to Milwaukee. This tenure included one World Series in 1948 when Boston lost to Cleveland in six games. (The Braves moved again in 1966 to Atlanta.) Parts of the stadium are still used today in Nickerson Field, home of Boston University football and soccer.

Hall of Fame second baseman Eddie Collins broke into the American League in unusual circumstances. On September 17, 1906, he played SS flawlessly and hit a single off Ed Walsh of the White Sox while playing for Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics. However, the box score listed the SS as "Sullivan." Mack gave Collins the pseudonym to avoid endangering Collins' status as the starting QB of the Columbia football team However, the ploy didn't work. When Collins returned to Columbia for the fall term, he learned that he had lost his college eligibility but not because of the six games he played with the A's. Instead, his earlier tenure with a semipro baseball team had been discovered. Collins had used his earnings to finance his education.

Eddie went on to have the longest major league playing career of the 20th century – 25 years (1906-1930). Mack eventually called Collins "the finest infielder of all time." Eddie served Connie as a member of the A's "$100,000 infield" that won four pennants during five years (1910-1914).

Reference: Baseball's Hall of Fame, Where the Legends Live Forever, Lowell Reidenbaugh

Bobo Newsom is the first major league player to have worn the number "00." He did that during his fourth stint with the Washington Senators in 1946/1947. That's right – his fourth sojourn in the Nation's Capital (but not his last). Bobo, whose real name was Louis Norman Newsom, is best known for his peripatetic career. Below is the list of his stops. Newsom's best seasons were 1940 (20-5 for Detroit), 1939 (20-11 with Browns and Tigers), and 1938 (20-16 for Browns). He played in the World Series for Detroit in 1939 and 1940 and for the Yankees in 1947. For his career Bobo was 211-222 with a 3.98 ERA.

1929-30: Brooklyn Dodgers	1932 Chicago Cubs	1934-35 St. Louis Browns
1935-7 Washington Senators	1937 Boston Red Sox	1938-9 St. Louis Browns
1939-1941 Detroit Tigers	1942 Washington Senators	1942-3 Brooklyn Dodgers
1943 St. Louis Browns	1943 Washington Senators	1944-6 Philadelphia Athletics
1946-7 Washington Senators	1947 New York Yankees	1948 New York Giants
1952 Washington Senators	1952-3 Philadelphia Athletics