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Show DASEBAI.L owners, managers, D players and writers often can b : wrong. So can baseball fans win 1 don't like to admit it. Here Is a letter from an ardent Ozark country rooter: "Why don't you fellows admit that I all the great ball players of mod- ern time come from I the Ozark country, where they can run and throw? I mean Arkansas. Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas? Tex-as? I mean such t fellows as Dean, Hubbell, Pepper Martin, Warneke and others. Also this Cardinal ball I club that whipped the eastern Dodg- p. Martin ' ers and the eastern j Red Sox last year? We have the legs and arms in this rugged country coun-try that the East doesn't have." In mingling and hanging around I with the Cardinals, one of our fa- j j vorite ball clubs, we began a slight , check-up . In a vague way, we also had the Idea that this fast-running, hard-throwing, hard-throwing, hustling team was a prod-! prod-! uet of the cottonwood trail, the coun-try coun-try where men have arms and legs j and take desperate chances. But we ran across a different answer In ' checking with the world's cham- ! pi' 'IIS For example there was Enos Bradsher ("Country") Slaughter, a ball player as typical of Cardinal strength as any man you can And a ball player with a great arm and a pair of fast-flying legs. I "Country" Slaughter should have I been a typical Ozarklan. But we , discovered that Slaughter came from Roxboro, N. C, and he got his 1 start In the South Atlantic league with Columbus, Ga. Well, what about George John ("Whitey") Kurowski, as good a third baseman as you'll meet today? "Whitey" Kurowski came from Reading, Pa., playing with Portsmouth Ports-mouth in the Middle Atlantic league, j where he hit only .380. Come From Everywhere Marty Marlon certainly must be a member of the cottonwood trail. But we find that Marty came from Richburg, S. C, before moving to Rochester for his baseball education. educa-tion. Marty was with Rochester three years before they decided he could handle an infield rap. But what about Stanley Frank Mu- i sial, possibly the best all-around ball ! player in the game? Muslal reports from Donora, Pa., and almost his entire early career was along the Atlantic seaboard, until he came to the Cardinals six years ago. Terry Moore came up from Memphis, Mem-phis, Howie Pollet from New Orleans. Or-leans. Schoendienst worked in the East. Johnny Beazley is from Ten- nessee, the city being Nashville. The Ozark landscape certainly has sent in its share of great ball players. play-ers. More than its share. It is surprising how many fans j think of these hard-running, hard-throwing, hard-throwing, hard-fighting Cardinals as a rather rough bunch from the : Ozark landscape. But this Cardinal camp is one of the quietest and most i orderly I have seen. They are all well-dressed, well-behaved, rather : soft-voiced and always friendly. Lon an Ozark Roy I still miss my old tobaeco-chew-j ing pal, Lon Warneke, who could wash down a big hunk of tobacco with a bottle of beer. Lon, from Mt. Ida, Ark., held the all-around, tobacco-chewing championship. He has no successor on the Cardinals today. The Cardinals' manager, Eddie Dyer, is probably best described as the exact opposite of Leo Durocher, his hottest rival, another great manager. man-ager. Dyer is a graduate of Rice institute in Texas, one of the leading lead-ing institutions of learning in this country. The rumor is that he was a Phi Beta Kappa. He was also a football star, one of the best in Texas Tex-as in his time. He is a quiet, soft-spoken soft-spoken Texan, who has few arguments argu-ments with umpires or anyone else. But don't forget that he knows his , trade. As a minor league manager j in the Cardinal farm system, he : kept sending along ballplayers who made good. Dyer had retired from baseball to j work in the oil business with his two brothers in Houston, Tex., when Sam Breadon sent for him to fill in for Billy Southworth. As easy going as Dyer seems to be, there is nothing soft about him. You don't get to be the best blocking back in Texas football if you're on the soft side. Dyer has the respect j and affection of his squad. "My team wants to play winning baseball," he told me. "I don't have to watch their hours. They love the game and like to win. 'They keep in shape. I don't want anyone around I have to watch. Just give me men j like Terry Moore, Marty Marion, Stan Musial, "Country" Slaughter, "Whitey" Kurowski, "Red" Munger, Howie Pollet and a few more like these, and I don't have to worry. I Whatever happens, I know they are giving the team 100 per cent of all they have." That seemed to be quite enough in 1946. Ask the Red Sox. |