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Show X. 1 $his A's will again be a big threats in the American League pennant race next year. And Mister Mack points out to his young pitching ,.taff as the reason. Of the nine pitchers of the 1948 regular staff, only one is over 30. That one is Phil Marchildon now 33. The others are Carl Scheib 21. Charley Char-ley Harris 22, Alex Kellner and Lou Bi'i.ssie 24, Bill McCahan and Joe Coleman 26, Bob Savage and Dick Fowler 27. It's one of the youngest pitching staffs in the majors. If those youngsters click, the A's not only will be dangerous next year but for several sever-al years to come. Incidentally, the A's ran quarter-page ads in Philadelphia Phil-adelphia papers recently thanking thank-ing fans for their loyal support during the past season in which the A's established a new attendance attend-ance record of 947,000. When Michigan tackles Navy this Saturday, the Wolverines will probably have to use their third and fourth-string teams to keep the score down. The Midshipmen Mid-shipmen have yet to win their first game this year. In fact they have only won two games in the last two years. What an upset it would tie if Navy did turn the trick. Now that the St. Louis Browne have Jack Graham, the Pacific Coast homerun king, they hope to land in the first division next season. Graham was recently purchased pur-chased from San Diego where he hit 48 homers for the season. But the Browns have just one little worry. Graham was beamed last July which kept him out of the lineup for a month. Up to the time he was hit he had 46 homers to his credit. After returning he only hit two more. Perhaps Graham Gra-ham has become a bit plate shy. But should he return to peak form, h-e has the power in that bat of his to push the Browns up the ladder. JUST GAB Stanford, replacing Notre Dame on the Army schedule, sched-ule, tackles the West Pointers in New York Saturday looks like the Indians will get scalped. Yankee fans will not only see a new manager in 1949 but also a new bat boy . . . .the one they had joined the Marines . . .of course, ionly three games the year before. be-fore. Today he is hailed as one of the greatest passers in pro football. He leads the Ail-American Conference both in passing and in total offense.' And that's topping such men as Frankie Albert Al-bert of the Forty-Niners and Glenn Dobbs of the L. A. Dons. Ratter-man Ratter-man not only is tops in football but also in tennis, baseball and other sports. And for good measure meas-ure he's a piano artist, too, having hav-ing played with the Buffalo Symphony Sym-phony orchestra.. Connie Mack is confident that COMMENTS By Guy Stevens Pro football is heading for squalls unless the National Football Foot-ball League and the All-American Conference get together and stage a pigskin "world series." Attendance is dropping off in both circuits and something will have to be done to stimulate interest. The New York Giants used to pack them in, drawing crowds of 50.000 and 60,000 people. The other Sunday, they played the Pittsburgh Steelers before a slim gathering of 13,500. The Washington Wash-ington Redskins played the Green Bay Packers in Milwaukee with only 13,000 in the stands. Boston has been drawing crowds of 5000 and 6000. The drop in attendance has been felt by every pro team in the big time. Even the Cleve land Browns are not drawing asS well as last year. So the boys in the front office had better get together, for their own sake, and settle their little squabble. They have nothing to lose and plenty to gain. If the West Coasters want to keep the Rose Bowl game one of the top attractions of the year, they should insist that the Big Nine toss out the 'rule which forbids for-bids a repeater to play in the Rose Bowl. Right now Michigan is dead against any such change. Second-rate Second-rate teams coming to the Bowl will probably kill off the series, which is just what West Coast fans would like to see happen. . You can expect the St. Louis Browns to sell a few of their choice players very soon. They only lured 330,000 cash customers this past season and that's hardly sufficient to operate a major league lea-gue club. But the only high-priced player the Browns have is Third-baseman Third-baseman Bob Dillinger. The asking ask-ing price on him is a mere $200.-000. $200.-000. And the only club around these days who might be willing to pay that kind of money is the I Boston Red Sox. Last winter, they dished out $200,000 and five players just for Vernon Stephens. So don't be surprised if Boss Tom Yawkey digs down again and buys Dillinger. When Joe Louis meets the winner win-ner of the Baksi-Charles bout next June, he will have held the title exactly 12 years. He won the championship on June 22, 1937, by scoring an eight-round knockout knock-out over Jimmy Braddock in Chicago. And down through the fistic years thfe Brown Bomber has proven that he is one of the greatest fighters of all time. In 1941, he reached the peak of his career, fighting seven title bouts. But since the war, Louis has slowed up considerably. He had two fights in 1946, one in 1947, and one this year. From all indications in-dications he'll only have one bout in 1949. Until someone wins the title, Louis, like Old Man River, just keeps rollin' along. It took pro football to bring George Ratterman out into the spotlight. This 21-year-old "wonder "won-der boy" quit Notre Dame last year because he could see no future fut-ure playing second-string to Johnny Lujak. He still had another year to go but that made no difference. dif-ference. He joined the Buffalo Bills and passed them to eight wins, which is quite a feat considering con-sidering that the Bills had won |