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Show dgcksegt. Cj)riving I By FRANK K. BAKER ! 1 Telegram Sports Editor If Ogdcn's Bobby Adams ever needs any baseball ref-. ref-. erence, just let him write to Manager Tom Robello of the Salt Lake City Bees. Robello is completely sold on the batting prowess of the 160-pounder who walked off with the Pioneer league batting bat-ting crown last summer after compiling a .356 average for 105 games. There's one kid with a lot of grit," the Bee skipper said during a recent bit of Hot Stove league gossip. "Sometimes "Some-times the averages will fool you and a batter rides into a championship on a sensational piece of streak hitting, far ever his head. "But not in Bobby's case. He was in and out of the line-up several times on account of a knee injury. He played a couple of infield positions and even switched to the outfield so the Reds could utilize his batting punch aad not jeopardize further injury to his knee in the melees around second base. That's enough switching to upset a lot of young ball players. But not Bobby Adams. He hung in there and hit like a champion right down to the end. Anybody who can come through like that deserves to win the title." So far as Robello is concerned the Junction City star has few if any weaknesses at the plate. "We played lim every conceivable way," he said. "Our chuckcrs threw fast balls. They played him inside and outside, both high and low. They tried to curve him out of there. And they even loosened him up with close inside pitches, but he still came up with two or three hits nearly every time we played him." HE CAN ALSO WAIT THE PITCHERS OUT Some of the boys around the league got the idea that Bobby was a first-pitch hitter. Among them was Manager Kenny Penner of the Pocatello Cardinals. The Bee manager man-ager says that idea that didn't prove any good either. On instruction, the Bees wasted a couple of pitches on him deliberately one night, hoping he would be so eager to swing at the first pitch that he'd swing and either miss or lift an easy fly. That didn't work, though. Adams made no offer at either pitch and, when a curve came up on the next pitch, Adams belted it for a double. Bobby's ability to clout the league's leading pitchers made a big impresion with Robello. "Why, he batted against Mel Ristau like he owned him," he recalled, "and you know that Mel won 17 games and lost only nine for us with his tantalizing southpaw delivery." The Junction City star probably made his greatest hit with Robello, though, when he got up off the ground, dusted the dirt from his uniform and whacked the next pitch into right field behind a, runner. As something of a twatsmith himself, Tom knows what it is like to be dusted off or loosened up at the plate. He has had to jump back or flatten himself in the dirt time and time again when the opposition figured he was getting too much of a toehold at the plate and sought to loosen him up or drive him back with inside pitches. GOOD BATTERS D0N7 SCARE EASILY .These tactics frequently work on less capable stickers than Adams or Robello, who batted .343 last year himself. The scheme at least disconcerts a lot of batters, spoils their concentration" and frequently spoils a batter's rhythm. The 160-pound Adams weathered a lot of these attacks, though, and batted as brilliantly against the topnotch teams as he did against the last division clubs. If the knee which kept bothering him last summer proves sound again after the winter lay-off, Adams may go a long way in baseball Although Alvin "Nig" Tate was something of a disappointment dis-appointment last summer, the Bees aren't going to give up on the powerful right-hander. "You can't get discouraged discour-aged on a fellow who can throw as hard as he does," says the front office. Tate won 13 games and was charged with 10 losses. A batted ball struck him on the pitching shoulder in midsea-aon midsea-aon and he might have improved his record except for that "Nig" banked almost entirely on his fast pitch when he first joined the Bees here late in 1939. This was swell for a few innings, but it lacked the necessary variety to make him a big league prospect and he has been trying since to develop a curve and a change of pace. He showed some progress in this line last season and that's why the Bees plan to take him to spring practice again this year. There's a much greater chance of a chucker developing a curve, and the right kind of control than there ever is of manufacturing a fast delivery. And extremely fw chuckers ever get by in the majors without a swift one. |
