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Show The Rook on the Writers hhh tizs.u hmh ain Experts in Training Camp (How the baseball writers look in spring training to a recruit ball player.) By DAMON RUN YON. En Route "With the Giants, March 31. I HAVE been watching these baseball writers work out for a couple of weeks now, and reading what they have been writing about me and other recruits, and I have got a pretty good Jine on most of them. Of course, it is pretty earlv in the season to be judging them, as they are not really warmed up, but there are a couple I would like to ask waivers on right away. . One of them said in his paper that I have a bad throwing arm. He was out on the field yesterday, nutting around with a ball and glove, and getting in the wav of the ball players, and I watched him throw a couple of times. He could not toss the ball from the home plate to first base in three tosses. I guess he has been putting too much on his lingers when he is beating that old typewriter, and panning me about my arm, so he had nothing left when he tried" to throw a baseball. I. have been looking him over in his paper, too. I mean I have been following follow-ing the stuff he is writing from camp about ball players, and he writes like he throws. 1 He is a promising young fellow, at that, and has been all his life, so they tell me, but he may improve. There is certainly a lot of room for improvement in him. The other fellow said in his paper that I fight the ball when I am going after a grounder. I took a peek at him, too, when he was trying to stop a little roller, and it looked to me as if he was trying to hatch out the ball. "Needs Warrant to Stop Ball." HE might have stopped it if he had a warrant and a couple of policemen to help him, but he could not do it alone. I cannot say he fought the ball, like he claims I do, because it was no contest.- The ball had everything its own way. When baseball writers go south with a ball club they ought to keep off the field, as they only tip themselves off. It is the same as if I should go into the press stand and try to write up a game, although, at that, I guess I do it as well as these experts play ball. There is a veteran wnter down here who has a Charley horse in his arm. I noticed him at breakfast this morning. He had hard work signing his meal check, and still harder work getting his hand into his pocket to find a 10-cent piece with which to tip the waiter. Afterward, I guess, his muscles thawed out a little, as he wrote a two-column two-column article panning the tar out of a bunch of the boys who are doing the best they can. T have put in a lot of time watching another fellow who says he does not think 1 cover enough ground to make a big leaguer. 1 cover more than he does, anyway. He spends whole afternoons standing out in front of the hotel watching watch-ing the girls go by, and he" never covers more than a yard to either side of him. He is a great fellow up at the plate, though. I mean the. dinner plate. He never pulls away, and he is a great waiter. He waits until they have brought him in everything on the bill of fare. When he orders he just signs his name to the menu card aud hands its to the garsong and sa's: "Bring me all that, with some bread." He came out to the ball yard the first day we had practice and wrote a story about me. in which he had everything right but my name and the position I play. I. would not knock a baseball writer for the world, but I feel sure this fellow will not do for the big league. He ought to be farmed out to the Copper league for experience. Down in the Copper it is not against the law for ball players to kill baseball writers who criticise them. "Baseball Humorist Is a Funny Guy." THESE is still another writer working out here, who is called a baseball humorist. I suppose it is because he is also supposed to know something about baseball. He is certainly a funny guy when he writes in a serious vein. We have a couple of baseball poets with us, but they are old heads and are taking things easy at first. They are waiting for the weather to got hotter before they cut loose. Baseball poets have to have their hot weather before they can get going good. One of them did a six-stanza workout by way of practice this week, but he had nothing on his meter. He was just lobbing them over, so to speak. Along about June he will be burning the old sonnets across at the top of his form, however. The other poet has been going back a little the past couple of years, and I hear he is going to take up free verse. Old pitchers often take up the spitball after they "have lost their speed and curves, so it is only fair to allow old baseball poets to use some substitute when they feel themselves slipping. There is a writer here who has long made a practice of prophecies about baseball, and T see where he says in the paper that I will never last. It is the only thing that has been said of me which gives me hope. I have looked this prophet up, and after doping out his record for a loug period of years I find that he is right only once every third Pancake Tuesdav. As he prophesied that the Brooklyn Dodgers might lose the world's series, I figure that he will not be right again until 1919, so I expect to be up there with the boys when the season opens. I repeat that it is pretty early to be judging the lads, but I have given my opinion on what I have seen to date, and in summing up I must sav that I am afraid they cannot win the pennant this year. They are too weak in too many departments. (Signed) ROOKY. |