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Show FROM what section of the countrj do most of the leading basebal and football players leave theii tracks on the way to headlines? This seems to be the favorite argument argu-ment among the armed forces bj land and sea, not f overlooking the air. I These arguments A , Ssj pile in on you with I . 4 ' " 1 the sweep of a tidal h 2 3 wave. We put the fj baseball argument ,;-' fl up to Paul Kritchell, yggr l the veteran Yankee dff ' scout who has been vjM'' trailing ivory for over 30 years. LtK Paul picked the southeastern swing Grantlaad Rice from Maryland on through the Carolines and Georgia. "This section," he said, "has gtv en ns soon ballplayers as Babe Ruth, Charlie Keller, Whit Wyatt, Spud Chandler and many others. And bow about Enos Slaughter and Terry Moore from Dixie? Also don't for. get Ty Cobb. Georgia and the Care-Unas Care-Unas are hot spots. "Who are three of the four greatest great-est autflelders?" the Yankee scout went on. "Cobb, Ruth and Jackson. Speaker came from the South, but aver to the West." "What about the Southwest?" 1 asked. Paul admitted he hadn't patrolled that beat I can give him part oj the answer Bill Dickey, Dizzy Dean, Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby, Pep per Martin, Carl Hubbell, Lon War. neke, and many more. The expected howl came up about the East and North. "What about Hans Wagner, Christy Mathewson, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Eddie Collins, Frank Frisch, Herb Pennock, Pie Traynor, Jimmy Collins, Larry Lajole? Who wants to bet me that on any all-time team the North and East doesn't lead the South and the Southwest or the Far West?" With Wagner; Collins. Lajoie, Frisch, Mathewson, Gehrig, Traynor, Tray-nor, Jimmy Collins there were no takers. The East would have the entire infield as a starter. Plus Mathewson. Same in Football While this discussion was under way, we received a letter from the U. S. Air Training Station at Jacksonville, Jack-sonville, Fla. "It makes mi a trifle sick," the flier wrote, "when I read about the dominance of the Midwest and South in football. Notre Dame this season wrecked all college teams. But where did Bertelli come from? Springfield, Mass. Where did big White, her star tackle, come from? The East Where did Creighton Miller Mil-ler go to school? In the East. And these were the best that Notre Dame had. These men made Notre Dame. And there were others. "Just a short while back North Carolina comes up and beats Pennsylvaniawith Penn-sylvaniawith ten Pennsylvanlans on the Tar Heel team. Georgia takes the lead a year ago with Sinkwich and others from Ohio, plus Trippl from Pennsylvania. Sinkwich and Trippl made Georgia. Yon don't call these southern players, do yen? "I'll tell you where the best football foot-ball players came from before the war. From the mining districts pf Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Far better than the Midwest and the South. The answer is that Jock Sutherland at Pittsburgh beat Notre Dame six years in a row, allowing only one Notre Dame touchdown in these six years. What happened? Notre Dame threw Pitt and Jock off ber schedule. Elmer Layden, then coaching at Notre Dame, admitted ne couldn't compete with Pittsburgh. This isn't a matter of opinion. It's a matter of fact And Jock's players play-ers were practically all easterners." Quite a Country This is still quite a hunk of country. coun-try. What about the Southwest, that has given the game Sammy Baugh, not overlooking Don Hutson from Arkansas? Or a fellow named Thorpe from Oklahoma? Baugh Butson Thorpe not bad. For some reason no one seems to pave, a word in for the Far West leaning against the Pacific ocean. In Rose Bowl games. Southern California meeting Pittsburgh, Tu-lane, Tu-lane, Duke and Tennessee has never nev-er lost one of these flower-bordered contests. In my opinion, before the war the twa best recruiting spots in the United Unit-ed States were Minnesota and the ;onntry surrounding Pittsburgh, leaning material. Bob Neyland and Frank Thomas were not so far behind in the South. Look over their records. The Curse of Tension One reason an Army-Navy game is leldom a high class football soiree, n the football side, is due to the tension of both teams. One reason golf is such a difficult rame to play is also due entirely to tension. "Golf would be one ef the easiest if all games to play," Joe Kirk-soed, Kirk-soed, the trick-shot master told me, "if it wasn't for tension. Tension is the big killer, the thing that tightens tight-ens them an op from the top star Is the lowest duffer." |