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Show Three Coasters Engage in Race for Home-run- Honors g $ v45 t U & s& t Brief, Guisto and Bodie Are Likely to Set New Mark , . - . . . . - -1 I ' ' 11 f ' , ' - i g f '1 - Jv 0 1 I S i"1 ' til - flH M 7 S 1 ' r " fit' I )i I'. - t-3 . , , Hf h , j X I h V t - "K-A Home-run Champions. 1903 Eas'an, Sacramento. . .13 1904 Eagan, Tacoma 25 190n Eagan, Tacoma 21 1906-1907 No record kept. 1908 Heitmuller, Oakland . . 12 1909 Johnson, Portland ... .13 1910 Bodie, San Francisco. .30 1911 Ryan, Portland' 23 1912 Coy, Oakland 19 1913 Coy, Oakland 18 1914 Lober, Portland 9 1915 Schaller, S. F 20 1916 11., 11 ? MUCH interest has been aroused in Salt Lake and, indeed, in every town of the circuit in the remarkable race for home-run home-run honors which is being put on by Bunny Brief of the Saints, Louie Guisto Guis-to of the Beavers and Ping Bodie of the Seals. Up to this time Bunny has knocked the ball over 10 times; Louis has 10 to his credit and Ping shows up with i). TMb is only the eighth week of the season. After today there will be twenty-two weeks yet to run. Already the league record of thirty, held by Bodie, is one-third attained, with two weeks yet to go before the season has reached its one-third stage. Unless some of these home-runners, or all of them, suffer a slump, the 1916 season in the Pacific const league bids fair to add another to the many world 's records that have been made in this circuit. The league record is held by Bodie, who poled 30 home runs in the season of 1910, and the nearest approach to this was tho 25 circuit clouts of old Truck Eagan of the Tacoma club back in 1914. Of course Bodio had from three to four weeks longer on the small San Francisco park in 1911 than the other clubs, and that may account for his better home-run record. Even this year Bodie has a better chance to beat out Quisto and Brief, as he has eighteen weeks on his homo park, the three extra ex-tra weeks occurring when Oakland is the homo club against San Francisco. The only thing that may mitigate against Bodie 's chanco is the recent addition of about twenty feet of wire to the already high wire right field fence in the San Francisco park. Householders House-holders living a few feet from the fence complained so insistently about broken windows that Henry Berry had to elevate bis fence. Bodie got a lot of home runs over this fence. However, it is not expected to interfere with Guisto or Brief, who are natural left field hitters, and there are no traps or bunkers in that direction. A glance at the table accompanying this article will show that there are high and low water marks in hitting home runs, and this seems to be a high water year. The fewest number of home runs made in tho leaguo of which thero is any record, was in 1914, when Ty Lober of the champion Portland club swotted nine of them out of the lots in the various parks. Last year there was piite a scramble on for the honors, Biff Schaller of the Seals beating out Bodio and Joe Ged-eon Ged-eon of the Salt Lake club hy one homer, he getting an even twenty. The only batter in tho history of flic league to win the home-run hitting crown in three successive years was olil "Truck" Eagan of the" Sacramento and Tacoma clubs. In the first three years of the league's existence lie batted bat-ted out fifty-nine four-saekers, his big year being in 1904. The coast record books were not extended to contain the home-run work of l!)n6-7, the first being the year of tho San Francisco fire, which destroyed a lot of the earlv averages. Truck, who was then hitting hit-ting tho ball hard, may have been leafier. Truck was-so far ahead of the field that there was no competition. However, How-ever, tho man who has led the National league for the past three years in home runs, Gavvy Cravath, finished second to Faj.'au in the three years mentioned, getting seven in lfln.3, thirteen in 1!1:)4, and nino in 1005. In passing, wo might recall that Cravath hit nineteen homers in each of the 1913 anil 1914 seasons and twenty-four in the 1915 race. It is said, though, that Cravath, like Bodie, Bo-die, has had the advantage of an enclosure en-closure much smaller than the rest of jj tho fields in tho league. |