| OCR Text |
Show Afrits . Released by Weatern Newspaper Union. "THE day of power baseball, sym-bolized sym-bolized in recent years by the New York Yankees, seems to be passed. The old fashioned game, with a revival of run-scoring strategy, strate-gy, is coming back. And for two reasons: (1) The topnotch home run hitters are going to be missing. (2) The rabbit baseball Is gone tt least for the duration. With the real power hitters like Hank Greenberg, Ted Williams and Joe DiMagglo In the armed services, serv-ices, the long hits will be considerably consider-ably fewer. Other muscle men are In a retiring mood, and still others Bgure they can get their best licks in by working in a defense Job. Remaining Hitters There will be some good hitters on leek. Mel Ott has led his league in home runs. Dolph Camilli, Charley Char-ley Keller, Bill Nicholson, Ernie Lombard! and Rudy York get distance, dis-tance, but they never managed to get up there with the leaders. Even If the power hitters were back it's far from certain they would be getting distance-as-usual. Hie dead ball is re-appearing. It's an ersats number of unusual construction. con-struction. As you know, (or do you?) golf balls are covered with a gummy, gum-my, resistant substance called batata. ba-tata. This material Is being reprocessed reproc-essed and used In baseballs for purposes pur-poses of elasticity. Early experiments experi-ments left much to be desired and the manufacturer is still experimenting. experi-menting. The importance of the rabbit ball is beyond question. The records show that nobody came close to the 20 home run mark until Babe Ruth totaled 29 In 1919 when the lively ball is said to have made its first appearance. In 1927 Ruth racked jp 60 circuit blows. Double Threat Only twice has Ruth's home run record been in danger. Jimmy Foxx threatened with 58 In 1932 and Hank Greenberg with 58 In 1938. If M 7 ! HANK GREENBERG conditions had been the same as when Ruth set his record, both might have broken his mark. Immediately Im-mediately after Rulh boosted the total, several parks ftarted adding barriers which brought new obstacles obsta-cles into the paths of the heavy hitters. hit-ters. St. Louis, for instance, erected erect-ed a right field screen which Interfered Inter-fered with the home run production produc-tion of Foxx and Greenberg. They both dented it with hits that earlier would have been home runs. When the Bambino set the record a ball that hit fair and bounced Into the stands was a home run. When Foxx threatened in 1932 that lame ball was good for only a two-base two-base hit. From now on it is likely that one run will have an importance that it has lacked for at least 20 years. Teams tried for clusters of runs. They won ball games. Hitters figured fig-ured there was little use in trying to steal a base and risking the chance of being thrown out. Why try a hit-and-run or squeeze play when there was a good chance of the batter socking the ball out of the park? Chop Hitters With the appearance of the dead ball the chop hitter will be the most valuable. It will be up to him to "hit 'em where they ain't." They'll play for the single runs because single sin-gle runs are going to mean more. More emphasis will be placed on coaching. Players will have to be taught how to bunt and how to run bases. Extra base hits will come through speed and agility. Sliding will be important. Ty Cobb used seven different slides. The modern player uses one. Speed and deception decep-tion will play important parts in this year's game. Power baseball will give way to a more scientific game. It shouldn't hurt baseball ln any way. SPORTS SHORTS C More favorites won races at Chicago's Chi-cago's Sportsman's Park last season sea-son than at any other race track in the land. C Luke Appling of the White Sox will be working for his 1,000th run and 2.000th hit this season. He has 362 American league runs, 1,868 American league hits. C. Joe DiMaggio didn't hesitate when asked who he thought was the best center fielder in baseball 'The best," he said, "is Dominic even if iie is my kid brother." |
