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Show HEAVY HITTERS ARE FAVORED BY UMPS Facing a .300 batter is hard enough work in itself, but Bill .lames says it is made a whole lot harder by the' umpires um-pires who unconsciously favor the man with an established reputation of being & pill killer. ''It's almost impossible to get the corners on a hard hitter,'' says -lames. 1 ' The ball 's got to be squarely over the plate or all vour effort goes into the umps' dismal (Bal-l-L ' Why- Well, the reason ia that the umpires, unknown un-known to themselves, place too much reliance in the 'eye' and .judgment of the man with a big reputation, and unless un-less he takes a cut at the ball or by eome act indicates that he reallv thinks It a strike they'll call it a ball. And it isn 't hard to see how that works Ot. Tt's the same proposition as monev making money. You Ve got to feed, those heavy stickers better balls, and, getting what they like, you can see it's a whole lot easier for them to connect. con-nect. But then again, T guess we haven't got much to kick about. We get the shade on the sucker hitters, which makes it fifty-fifty." |