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Show yE ARE letting the grass roots of baseball die." Sam Brcadon, owner and president of the j World Champion Cardinals, re-; re-; marked to me re- cently. "I am referring re-ferring to the millions mil-lions of kids from 12 to 16 years old who would like to play baseball, but who get no help or encouragement. en-couragement. "This is true even in the big Southwest from the Ozarks to Texas the Cot- tonwood trail that 0ranUand Woi gave baseball such men as Tris Speaker, Rogers Horns-, Horns-, by, Dizzy and Paul Dean, Carl Hub-bell, Hub-bell, Pepper Martin. I could name a hundred others, including Bill Dickey from Arkansas and Lonnie Warneke, the tobacco chewing champion from Mt.,Ida. "Soft ball, football and other sports have started replac ing baseball base-ball as a recreation for the youngsters. young-sters. They like baseball and would rather play it If they only had the chance. This will he the big job of any new commissioner we might Mm. Be must offer and work out a plan that will give youngsters all over the country this chance." We have been hammering with what punches we had left along these same lines, receiving no support sup-port except from Pittsburgh and Detroit De-troit and a few individuals like Jack Coombs, the old Colby Carbine, baseball coach at Duke. Baseball, year after year, has gone to sleep in this important developmentand de-velopmentand this includes baseball's base-ball's Big Three. These three have run the game ably in other respects. But they have all fallen down on building up and bringing baseball to the kids from the ages of 12 to 16, many, many thousands of whom would rather play baseball than any other game, but rarely get the chance. Crowded cities lack of space lack of any help or cooperation on the part of baseball leadersthese have all figured in the decay of the game's so-called "grass roots." They have either forgotten all about the kids, or else they have been too shortsighted to face the major problem prob-lem of the game. The new commissioner must be one who can rebuild baseball for the kids and that will be his most important im-portant job. It will be a job no one in baseball has even approached, barring the few places I have mentioned. men-tioned. There are millions of kids who would like to play baseball who never have the chance. And anyone any-one with a half grain of intelligence knows that if a kid from 12 to 15 years old doesn't have the chance to play baseball, he will never get anywhere in the game. Football is different. You can take a husky young fellow around 18 or 19 who never saw a football and turn him into a great tackle or a great guard. Especially if he is big and fast. You can't do that with a base-bail base-bail player or a golfer. The great baseball players come up as kids who played the game. The great golfers came up as caddies Hagen, Sarazen, Ouimet, Nelson, Hogan, Chick Evans, Goodman, McSpaden, Johnny Farrell, Harry Cooper. Must Start Early Baseball and golf are games you must learn in early youth. Football can be picked up later on. Golf has been given a big break. Baseball hasn't. I don't care whether the new commissioner com-missioner is Jim Farley, Edgar Hoover Hoo-ver Or Ford Frirk Or enmo r,ra ale who has the respect of the ballplayers ballplay-ers and the spectators. All I know I is that his first job will be to or-i or-i ganize a new youth movement for I baseball, which (outside of Pitts-! Pitts-! burgh, Detroit and in certain locations loca-tions where the American Legion has been an active sponsor) has been almost completely overlooked, al-I al-I though the two big leagues have j each contributed $20,000 to this fund. Certainly there has been no help i from the two major leagues outside j of this contribution and little help from any of the minors. In many big cities, it must be admitted there is little room left where the kids can play except along cobblestone streets or those haunted by automobiles. But there is still space enough left in the United Unit-ed States to give boys from 12 to 16 a chanc e to play baseball. It is still a national crime that out of 100,000 18-year-old boys called to the j draft, over 25,000 are turned back as i physically unfit. But it is a difficult matter to get ! anyone interested in this problem. Army and navy say they are too ' busy trying to win a war to bother about the situation. And this group It too young for sport promoters to use as money-makers. Besides Breadon, only Larry Mac-Phail Mac-Phail and Horace Stoneham seem ! to think that part of the duty of the ! new commissioner should be that of trying to rebuild the waning enthu- I siasm for the game in the high KCbooU and the colleges, and even they can't agree as to how that j should be worked out. |