| OCR Text |
Show is paid by the Coast league to devote much of his time to promote, pro-mote, foster and encourage junior jun-ior baseball. (To Be Continued) - WHY ARE CALIFORNIA TEAMS HARD TO BEAT? The team was given an opportunity oppor-tunity to see the wreck of the City of San Francisco when the "Challenger" was stopped just across from the scene of the catastrophe. ca-tastrophe. It was really a gruesome grue-some sight. The boys enjoyed their short stay in Los Angeles and marveled marvel-ed at the large new Union sta- tournament at San Diego. Mr. Closson is commissioner of boxing, box-ing, wrestling and athletics in the state of California, and a member of the National Board of American Legion directors of baseball. He is a very ardent sponsor of American Legion baseball base-ball and is director of the program pro-gram at Lodi. The information I am passing on to you I obtained from him. Here it is California reaches 45,000 boys with junior legion baseball. The state is divided into in-to five areas and 26 districts. There are 563 odd Legion posts, I over 2 3 of them sponsoring baseball fl-ams. Their program is so intensive that their district and area championships are runoff run-off before June 30, just when we are starting to register our boys. No expense is spared in forming, form-ing, equipping and handling a team, the larger posts spend close to $1200, nearly twice as much as our whole program costs us, and smaller posts spend about $300 a team. At Stockton, Cal., the chief of police, an ex-big leaguer and two members of the fire department, depart-ment, both former big leaguers, devote much time to coaching coach-ing American Legion boys. Red Adams, publicity may for the Mission club of the Coast league, tion. They also enjoyed the splendid splen-did dinner given them at the station. Every boy on the team had an opportunity to see San Diego bay and the large cruisers and battleships of the U.S. navy anchored an-chored there. Cruises were taken on the ferries and the huge airplanes, air-planes, "Carriero Enterprise" and "Saratoga", gave them the biggest big-gest thrill. The boys also had an opportun-1 ity to see the beach at LaJolla, the race track at Del Mar, owned by Bing Crosby, and the famous mission, San Juan Capistrano. Citrus fruit groves drew much attention all along the route. Most of the boys' time on Treasure Island was spent on the "Gay Way", but many of the boys took in the exhibits of the various states and enjoyed the exhibits in the Hall of Science and in the Transportation building. build-ing. Some left the fair and went over to see San Francisco's Chinatown. Chi-natown. They are singing praises for Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox at San Diego, because he is a San Diego boy. Screw-ball Williams was a great kid ball player around the water front. Going now to baseball I want to present the American Legion baseball program and high school baseball program of the state of California. When you read this you may see why California teams are so hard to beat and1 why so many great baseball players play-ers come out of that state. While in California I struck-up struck-up a very congenial acquaintance with Archie M. Closson of Lodi, Cal., who was the director of our |
