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Show ITHO will be the rookie of the VV year f0r 1945, H year when rookies are about as scarce as wild turkeys that feed out of your hand? Sam Breadon, the Irish - panned owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, knows more about rookies and has had more good beginners than any- one else in baseball. base-ball. Year after year, the Cardinals have come up with recruits who proved to be better than many well - known veteran stars. Breadon keeps his eyes on the kids. Their salaries are never too high, but St. Louis is far from being the hottest hot-test baseball town Grantland IMce In the country, so far as attendance attend-ance figures show. You ran understand Sam Brcad-on's Brcad-on's enthusiasm when he figures that he has not only the best rookie of 1945, but one of the best of all lime. All of the aforementioned is by way of leading up to a recent remark re-mark made by Breadon as he watched Billy Southworth ready his Cardinals for another National league campaign. The experts were saying that the Cards were a cinch and that the all-time record of four straight 100-a-year victories was as good as in Al Munro Elias's statistics, statis-tics, but Breadon wasn't thinking about the Cards in general but of a freckled-faced kid playing left field. 'Better Than Musial' "He's a better prospect right now than was Stan Musial when he reported re-ported to us," remarked Breadon and a half dozen reporters' pencils dug into note pads almost before Sam's words were dry in the hot St. Louis air. "Better than Musial? Say, wasn't that taking in a lot of territory?" "Well," Breadon hastened to remark, re-mark, "I mean he ran do more things. He's a good lnfielder; he ran play the outfield as you now see. We i mild use him at second, short, third, left, center or right and stop worrying about any position he took over. He's as fast as they come and those minor league batting averages are no Bukes. Watch him. He's the rookie of the year." And who was the target of all this tall praise? Well, you'll hear a lot about him this year Albert (Red) Schoendienst, a typesetter's headache head-ache but a manager's dream. Here's a player who has been headline bait ever since he walked into a ball park. Well, almost since that first day. The weight of numbers num-bers obscured his first trek to Sportsmen's Park for he was one of 300 or 400 kids invited in 1942 for a tryout school. As a matter of fact, Schoendienst just walked in with a pal from Germantown, 111., and told the Cardinal scouts he would like to be a ball player. He was put through a series of tests-races, tests-races, throwing contests, batting drills and, after the scouts had prepared pre-pared a few notes on him he was excused and told he could stay for the ball game that afternoon of June 18, 1942. He returned home not knowing know-ing when he would be called again. Quickly Signed Up He didn't have to wait long. The ! Cardinals' Union City, Tenn. team in the Kitty league sent an SOS to the parent ball club, and the St. Louis board of strategy, after a hurried meeting, decided to sign up the kid redhead. As I said, Schoendienst was headline-happy from the start. He was batting .407 when the league disbanded dis-banded and finished the season with Albany, Ga., where he hit .269. The spring of '43 found him at Portsmouth Ports-mouth (Piedmont league) but when he opened the season with eight straight hits he was rushed up to Rochester where Pepper Martin found him as enjoyable as an old Western "gee-tah." Schoendienst resumed re-sumed his blasting in his new uniform, uni-form, finished the season with an average of .337, and was declared the league's most valuable player an unusual honor for a rookie. After 25 games in 1944, in which he hit .373, he was called into the army. An old eye injury caused him to be discharged. In fact, his left eye is practically blind. But this is an era when men overcome handicaps such as these and Schoendienst did j so by becoming a switch hitter. Now experts will tell you he packs more punch as a southpaw swatter than he does as a right-handed rapper, rap-per, his original stance at the plate. Gordon or Doerr? One of the main arguments among war hospital partisans is the choice between Joe Gordon of the Yankees and Bobby Doerr of the Red Sox. Here's part of the answer Gordon's Gor-don's frve-year batting average was .284 Doerr's seven year average was around .293. Gordon ln his five years belted out 125 home runs while Doerr In his seven years hit only 87 fonr-baggers. Gordon also had a good lead in the matter of rnns-batted-in. This leaves them pretty well matched offensively. |