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Show CHE ICK AFTER SEASONED MEN NOW Athletics' Pilot Done With t Experiments Westerners in 1917 Lineup. NKW YOKK, Dec .10. Has Connie Mack decided to switch his tactics and go after another American league pen-nant? pen-nant? Or is the lengthy bench manager man-ager merely kidding us? Mack is reported to have declared himself 1 li rough experimenting with so I much college talent. Ho is going to spend more of his time hereafter in trying try-ing to land players who will be capable ; of stepping into berths on his club and ! delivering the goods, instead of the eol-I eol-I lege brand who need sever? years in j the bushes and at least a year on a big j league bench before they are ready for j regular service. I Perhaps1 Mack felt the criticisms that. ! were directed at his misfits of 1916 more keenly tnan he would permit anyone any-one to think. Perhaps he has decided that his 4(rep" as a manager should be ' stimulated by a winning ball club. I Kvery baseball fan who has followed the fortunes of the Athletics for the past yix or seven years knows what Alack can do with real ball plavers. Any I time he surrounds himself with a regu- lar ball club he is as hard to beat to the wire as the proverbial streak of slicked np lightning. And for the good of the box office in Philadelphia it behooves be-hooves Mack to build up another winner. win-ner. When Mack broke up his famous combination com-bination that wonderful old infield he probably had other than pecuniary reasons for it. He almost admitted as much some months afterward, w.eu rumor ru-mor said he was about to sell Stuffy Mefnnes. At that time Mack remarked that he would not think of selling Mc-I Mc-I I nncs, even though Stuffy was slumping, slump-ing, and he gave as the reason that any I player who worked in perfect harmony I with the managerial ideas was sure of j his berth. So it must have been inter-j inter-j nal dissension that caused Mack to tear j down his wonderful combination. ; Connie says he has picked up some excel! en t material from the minor leagues; that he is through with experiments. experi-ments. During the recent season Mack worked with quite a squad of newcomers, newcom-ers, and he believes he has developed some regular ball players, who, with players he has selected from the ivory fields, will give him a winner next year. The 1017 infield of the Athletics will probably he composed of Mclnnes, Grover. Witt and Bates. Bodie. Strunk and Thrasher will probably figure as the regular outfielders. With Schang, Meyer, HaJey and Pic.i-nich Pic.i-nich to do the baekstopping," Mack has a quartette of young catchers, for, although al-though Schang can be called a veteran of the Mackian machine now, he is still a voting fellow. tn addition to Sheehan, "Jing" Johnson John-son and Nabors, who were with the Athletics last season. Mack has landed Noyes from Portland and Bill from "Waco, in addition to several promising minor league slabsters. According to reports from American league headquarters in Chicago, the Athletics Ath-letics alone were financial losers last season, and, figuring that Ban Johnson John-son intends to carry out his policy of seeing to it that the weaker sisters of his league get all the assistance he can lend them, the 1917 Athletics will probably prob-ably deserve watching next summer. |