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Show I While Waller Tinchell Is Away, This Month, Hi Column if ill Be Conducted by Guest Columnists. Nightlife Murders Baseball gays Babe Ruth By the Home-Run King Himself Propped up on a cot in a hospital for several weeks recently, following follow-ing an operation for the removal of a cartilage from my right knee, I spent a lot of time considering the future of baseball. Let's start with that nocturnal nuisance, night baseball. It's murdering mur-dering the sport with the help of the cradle-robbing magnates, who are killing the source and substance of the game by neglect of the kids, without whom it cannot exist. Night baseball is strictly a business busi-ness proposition an offshoot of war conditions. One or two games a week to give i the defense workers a break is O.K. ! But now both major leagues are planning four and five a week. That will spell the end of the sport, j The magnates won't give up the i regular week-end gravy of Saturday and Sunday daylight games. That will mean a layoff Monday and four I night contests. j To the players, this will be a drastic dras-tic and unhealthy way of life. Eye ; trouble will develop. Right now I night games are compelling some players who never had to use glasses to wear 'em. Babe Dahlgren is an example. Irregular meals and sleep is another an-other disadvantage. An athlete can't get-along without regular sleep and that will be impossible under a day and night schedule of games. Danger of Catching Colds In Night Games Imagine what will happen to the veterans, pitchers in particular. A pitcher perspires profusely during a game. In the daytime, usually with the sun shining, there is less danger of catching cold. I know what I am talking about. I caught one of the worst colds of my career In a night game, merely acting as a coach when I was with Brooklyn. What it is doing to those two-inning pitchers can well be imagined. im-agined. As for the fans. It's a mistake to think the men of the family are going go-ing to attend four night games regularly regu-larly each week. Mothers, wives and girl friends will soon stop that! Much publicity already has been given to the fact that night baseball will take the game away from youngsters. young-sters. Kids are the backbone ol the game. Smart baseball officials have done everything possible in the past to promote the interest of these future audiences by admitting them free to week-day, daylight games. Boys, as prospective big leaguers, leag-uers, are not getting a square shake from organized baseball. The major clubs show no interest inter-est in a boy until he's 16 and can get working papers. Then, If he's got the stuff, they send him out to a Class D league where they squeeze what they can out of him as a hired hand. Softball and Baseball Just Don't Mix There seems to be a prowinp una thy toward baseball. The village town and former hot neighborhood teams and rivalries are fading. This cannot be attributed to the war, because be-cause the boys who made up those teams were usually under draft age. I hate Softball, though I approve any game that gets kids out in the sun, but Softball has ruined many a potential big leaguer. You cannot play Softball and excel at baseball. Progress is also pushing baseball aside. Bit, by bit, we see the growth of cities and towns wipe out sand-lots sand-lots and semi-pro ballparks. Even in small villages you will discover cornfields that once were baseball diamonds. No efforts are made to save the diamonds. Where are the kids going to turn to for aid? The kids themselves tossed the answer an-swer to me at one of my recent Saturday Sat-urday morning radio broadcasts on the A. G Spalding program. Devise a plan whereby the big leagues would sponsor baseball schools throughout the country, using retired star players play-ers as instructors. Boys start playing the game at eight years and. until they become 16, get little or bad schooling in the sport So they acquire unbreakable habits In batting, throwing, sliding and fielding unless they are natural-born natural-born players like the Otts. Cobbs, Collins. Speakers, etc. With professional pro-fessional coaching, the kids would be fit for league play anytime they were needed. 1 played during the last war and can vouch for the fact that few of the players who saw active ac-tive service ever reached top form again. Some of the aces like Capt. Hank Greenberg and Bill Dickey, who are along in years, may never return to the game. Chaps like Joe DiMag-gio. DiMag-gio. Bob Feller, Ted Williams and Terry Moore, depending on the type and length of their service, serv-ice, may take as long as three years or more to bit their former stride again, if they ever hit it again. |