Lobby Lobbying

To traveling baseball men, no place on earth looks so much like home as a hotel lobby. Between games, they gather beneath the potted palms to argue endlessly over the athletic past and to fight out the problems of the future. Last week, between seasons, some 1,500 of them swarmed into Colorado Springs for the first major-minor-league meeting since 1952. But even the most articulate of the tourists expected no more practical results from the official caucuses upstairs than they did from their own lobbying in the lobbies.

To the surprise of all, both majors and minors agreed on two important new rules, even found time for some spectacular trades:

P: Any player who has put in four years of minor-league ball is now eligible for drafting (i.e., hiring) by any major-league club. Under the old rule, major-league owners of farm clubs could leave employees in the minors subject only to their own call. Promising rookies hired as "bonus babies" will no longer have to ride major-league benches but can be sent to the minors for seasoning.

P: The Chicago White Sox swapped Outfielder Larry Doby, Pitcher Jack Harshman and a player still to be named for the Baltimore Orioles' Infielder Billy Goodman, Pitcher Ray Moore and Outfielder Tito Francona. Then the Sox sent Outfielder Minnie Minoso and Third Baseman Fred Hatfield to Cleveland in return for aging Pitcher Early Wynn and Utility Man Al Smith. In two brisk moves they shuffled off 182 RBIs (Doby, 79; Minoso, 103) and picked up only 87 (Smith, 49; Francona, 38), but they did get a good pitcher in the bargain.

After agreement on new rules and trades, the baseballers sat down to talk some more, and the illusion of interleague cooperation collapsed. Everything fell apart into familiar argument when the minors got wind of a big-league deal for network television of Sunday games. Screaming that Sunday is their only payday, that their fans would desert them to watch big-league ball, minor-league leaders sent a hasty telegram to Representative Emanuel Celler. Its gist: please re-open congressional hearings on the majors' baseball monopoly.

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