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Show BATTING SLUMP 01 II 1IRLE1GUE5 Stars Are Weakening and No Promising Youngsters Are Now Appearing. By Tribune Special Sport Service. CHICAGO, Aug. 19. Has batting become be-come a lost art in the big leagues? Those who have scanned clubbing records embracing the past four or five years have' found that no real swatting phenom has been produced in that time. Also, they have noticed with amazement that year after year the demon maulers have suffered a shrinkage in their averages. aver-ages. The last real batting person to appear along the baseball horizon was Josephus Jackson, who arrived in 1911. Since that period close to 1000 youngsters have come up from the bushes and taken a whirl in big league life. Out that army not one, with the possible exception of Dave Robertson of the New York Giants, has shown anything remarkable in a batting wav. Robertson is getting his first real trial this year. He lias been banging the ball with "startling, regularity and looks as if he might remain in the select circle of famous sluggers, but looks sometimes are deceiving. Robertson may sweep through manv seasons of play at the same remarkable re-markable pace he has maintained to date, or, like George Stone of the 1906 Brownies, he may blow himself to one great year and then skid back to obscurity. No Stars Since 1911. When Cobb, Speaker, Jackson. Doyle, Datibert, Collins and the few other batting bat-ting stars of the present time have faded and gone, who will arise to take their places? Most of them have reached the crest and are going backward. Yet no one has come in five years to fill their niches. The veterans have been finding It difficult this season to maintain the same terrific, pace of bygone days they are not in much danger of being dethroned. de-throned. Save Robertson, none of, the youngsters has shown enough to challenge. chal-lenge. Back in the early days of the American league Lajoie was the rider of the hitting hit-ting realm. Soon Cobb came along and offered battle. A while later Tris Speaker, Kddie Collins. Frank Baker, and then Joe Jackson entered the battle. But since the appearance of Jackson five years ago ,no batter of real merit has appeared along the Johnsonian frontier. It is much the same in the National league. Up to five years ago there were quite a number of swatters in that circuit cir-cuit who always gave, Honns Wagner a merry little battle. But they dropped by the wayside eventually. Along in 1910-11-12 Larry Doyle, Jake Datibert, Heinie Z i mmerma n and Fred Lud eru s a r rived and began swatting .300 or beyond, and pushed Wagner into the background, as Iajoie was pushed in the American league. Since then they have been monopolizing mo-nopolizing the top rungs in the National clubbing ladder, except on those rare occasions oc-casions when men like Chief Meyers, Sherwood Magee and a few others have flashed a good year. Slump in Batting. The woeful falling off in batting averages aver-ages during the past live years is shown best by i lie perusal of statistics compiled com-piled by the Baseball Magazine and printed print-ed in the A ugust number. The figures show that there were forty-two men in both leagues who batted beyond .300 in I!1 11. against thirteen last season. The table also points out that there were only two .S 25 hitters ui both leagues in 1915. against sixteen In 1911 a decrease of about S7 per cent. The table, follows: AMERICAN LEAGUE. Above Above Above Above Above .400 .;1TS .S.'iO .32.") .300 If 11 2 : H H 27 lim 1 3 4 9 21 1013 0 13 7 11 1 1' 1 4 0 0 1 4 10 101 5 0 0 1 2 S NATIONAL LEAGUE. Abov e Above Above Above Above .100 .375 ,3a0 .3125 .300 1011 0 (I 0 4 15 11)12 0 0 2 ti 23 r.n:: on: s i-i 10)4 o n o 2 P 1915 0 0 0 0 5 BOTH LEAGUES COMBINED. Above Above Above Above Above .4"0 .37:. .3.V) .325 .300 ion 2 fi it; 42 10) 2 1 3 6 15 4A 1!M3 0 1 S 12 2 1014 0 0 1 ; 19 1!H5 0 0 1 2 13 The general batting decline, in both leagues is shown by the following table, which relates how the grand average for the two major circuits has dropped from .2i;7 in 1011 to .24S In l'MT.; Year. At bat. Hits. Avar. 1011 S2.333 21,072 .267 1012 S2,05l 22.03K .2!S l'.H3 Sn,4::7 2I.D32 .261 t'.'W M.5S:i 20.340 .2 19 1015 SUSS 20.145 .2 1S |