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Show THERE ARE STILL A FEW OF THE VETERAN SLUGGERS FACING BIG LEAGUE PITCHERS c f3 1 C W i s i rvv w Vv xriix "cactus Crawford CTZTBW ' Cravath nN&-0: tonus njuai3 Wagner One by one the great sluggers who have blazed a trail of hits across the baseball horizon for the last ten or fifteen years are passing along. Hitters like Hans Wagner and Sam Crawford, for Instance, are few and far between these days, but there are still a few of the veteran larrupers facing fac-ing major league pitchers today, and one of the most picturesque of the lot is "Cactus" Cravath. The "Old Cactus" has been playing ball actively for sixteen years, and the ravages of time have long since begun to show, for Cravath's legs today refuse re-fuse to carry him around the gardens as they once did, and there are a few sprinkles of silver on his temples. Cravath 37 Years Old. But although Cravath is thirty-seven years of, age having celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday last March he still ranks as a demon at the bat. Taking Tak-ing a toe hold and swinging from the hip Is just as natural to Cravath as It ever was. And National League pitchers pitch-ers tell you that his eye has not been dimmed to any extent by the suns of 16 summers. Making four hits out of five times at bat is a feat often accomplished In baseball, yet not by one player. Cravath, Cra-vath, in his many years of slaughtering the offerings of pitchers, has registered four hits in one day many times. In the opening series between the Giants and Phillies he added another such performance to his long list, and two of the four hits he made In the second game against McGrawmen were doubles. dou-bles. Ruth Is Hard Hitter. Babe Ruth Is a tremendously hard hitter, but capable as he is with the bludgeon, he will probably never he able to rank as the consistent day-ln-and-day-out slugger Cravath has been, Crawford and Wagner were hitters of the Cravath type, or vice versa. Jake Daubert, when at his best, was also a hitter of this select type. It Is a pleasure to pay tribute to a player like the "Old Cactus." His weatherbeaten hide is Impervious to the criticisms that have been showered on his head by writers during the last two or three years kind criticism, sure enough but the kind that carries predictions which tell fandom that a player Is through and Cravath isn't through yet. |