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Show WYY ET SCDLS SgSDK CtO(gOT Oscar Plans To Run Club His Fashion By HENRY McLE.MORE tutted Press Sports Writer 1 SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 171 met the real condemned man of sports today, and he wasn't Inside Alca-trais Alca-trais grim walls. He sat before a dining room table In his home in near-by Oakland, sparring lustily with a heaping helping of frankfurters and sauerkraut. sauer-kraut. The man and ha waa Oscar Vltt actually appeared happy, despite) de-spite) the fact that when spring cornea round he must assume the duty of managing the Cleveland baseball team. His wife, Irene, unaware of the sentence that faces her breadwinner, aang at hr work about the house. Bob, the Vitts' 17-year-old son, also rlhnf Unjmjlf tha IrOllhlS that faces his father, whistled as lie did his high school homework. The canary chirped in Its cage and the Scottie barked and frolicked. I marveled at the bravery of Vltt and hla courage In hiding his rendexvous with disaster. Because that is what he has. Cleveland la the burial ground of baseball managers. Roger Peckinpaugh went there and left a beaten man. Walter Johnson went there and two years later ambled through the exit gate, thoroughly crushed. Steve O'Neill tried it for a year and a half and now he's looking for a job. Now Vitt has signed to manage the Indians and bare his scalp to the hatchets of the board of directors direct-ors that runs the team. Composed of bankers, railroad men. paint tycoons ty-coons and merchants, this : board tarts second guessing the manager at 7 a. m. teastern standard time) and, without even a stop during the seventh inning stretch, continues its work until 7 a. m. the next morning. Nothing a manager does suits the august board. If he calls the infield in-field in the board of directors wigwags wig-wags the players to get back. If hs aignals for a hit and run, the board of directors waves for a double dou-ble steal. The board does not even approve of the counter-clockwise movement of the drinking fountain handle. I asked Vitt if he knew all of this. He sid he did. "Yes," he answered, "1 have heard all about that. But, sonny boy, Cleveland will play ball tor me. If the boys don't like that, there will be a shakeup that will be a shakeup. There probably will be one, anyway. And Vltt won't be tired until two years are up, win. lose or collapse. Because Be-cause I've got a contract that rails for that long, and it'a a civil contract, not a baseball one. But we are not going to lose or collapse. col-lapse. We are going to win. I'm winning manager." The man talked on in this vein for another plate of frankfurters, or roughly half an hour. His enthusiasm enthu-siasm is tremendous. It's enormous. No sophomore ever went to bat against his school's old rival with more spirit than Vitt shows for the Cleveland job. His lifelong ambition has been to manage a big league club, otherwise other-wise he hardly would have quit Newark, which wins pennants by 23 games, to take charge at Cleveland, Cleve-land, baseball's Elba. He used to be pilot of Salt Lake City and Holly-Wood Holly-Wood in the Pacific Coast league. Vitt has definite ideas about Bob . Feller, the sensational Iowa farm boy with the blazing smoke ball. Teller wont be a Sunday pitcher pitch-er with me In charge," Vltt said. "Hell pitch whenever I want him to. He'a a good pitcher, but he's going to be a better one under me. Bob will pitch when Vitt says so. Nobody else will have anything to aay about hia work." In other words, Oscar Vitt is going to boss the Cleveland ball club. That will be a novelty, even if he finishes in last place. Even if he can't beat the other clubs, be a tins; the board of directors will be no mean accomplishment. |