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Show Released by Western Newspaper Union. WHEN the Chicago White Sox slipped to last place in American Amer-ican league standings, they more or less upset the theory that pitching is 70 per cent of a ball team. The strange case of the White Sox is one of the most widely disoussed topics whenever men discuss baseball. base-ball. Experts picked Jimmy Dykes' crew for no lower than third place. A scattered few gave them first place rating, quite a few saw them In the second spot, but comparatively comparative-ly few entertained any thoughts of a position lower than third. It would be more' than silly to say that the Sox haven't a chance. The; season is onlv well , ' J lllBllii under way and a lot of clubs have; snapped out of an early losing streak to make things tough for the leaders. lead-ers. But, by the same token, the Sox so far haven't lived up to expectations. A team that dropped 18 of 22 starts will Jimmy Dykes be forced to fight all the way to end up in third place. That the importance of pitching pitch-ing often is overrated is demonstrated demon-strated by the fact that the Sox have had better pitching this year than they did last season. They just can't get enough runs. One Ansiver Jim Bagby Jr., hurler for the Cleveland Indians, knocked off five victories in a rush the early part of this season. Last year he totaled only nine victories. And he states definitely that he isn't pitching a bit better than he did in 1941. Toward the end of the spring training season, Muddy Ruel, Sox coach, said: "We have a sound, balanced team. Our pitching is great, our infield dependable, our catching the best and our outfield needs only reserves." Muddy was right. The pitching has been more than excellent if not great. The . infield has been better than average and the outfield has lived up to Muddy's promises. But the hitting has been weaker than watered milk. It is true that the Sox had to get along without the services of Thornton Thorn-ton Lee and Taft Wright. But Lee. who won 22 games last season, couldn't have helped them much because be-cause their greatest need has been for hitting, not hurling. If Wright had been in condition, the story might easily have been different.. dif-ferent.. One nlaver could have brought the Sox out of their early season lethargy lethar-gy by starting to hit. Observers had pinned most of their hopes on Wright, but he was physically physical-ly unfit. However, the cause was not a .A, lost one. A year ,... ago Taft was in a Taft Wr'eht hospital with pneumonia the first month. Then he wound up hitting .440 the final month. Inevitable It has been pointed out that the early season fall of the Sox was Inevitable. In-evitable. They have stocked up with more than their share of decrepit players whom other teams no longer wanted. Year after year Dykes has made innocuous trades and purchases pur-chases at waiver prices, gathering a crew of elderly gentlemen with a deep interest in baseball. No one denies that Dykes has done a marvelous job. He isn't known as a miracle man merely because be-cause of his conversational output though that does approach the miraculous. Dykes knows how -to get the most baseball out of his men. He is a keen judge of players. Partial and somewhat obvious proof of this lies in the fact that Dykes called the turn on the current Novikoff-Cub situation. When No-vikoff No-vikoff was still hitting baseballs out of Pacific coast parks, Dykes brought a warning word back to Chicago ' that "if Novikoff fails to make the major league grade it will be because of his hitting. There isn't much good pitching in the Coast league and Novikoff still has to prove he can hit smart pitching." Even Natioual league fans will give testimony to Dykes' insight on that particular problem. Dykes still takes his troubles in stride and he's had plenty of them. Though he admits occasional hours of suffering, he hasn't changed the habits that brought him fame as baseball's miracle man. SPORT SHORTS CHeavyweight champion Joe Louis has named the war. In a poem written writ-ten for a national magazine by Carl Byoir, New York publicist, Joe was credited with naming "God's War." C. The first night game in the major leagues was played in Cincinnati seven years ago. C. A id the name of Man Mountain Dean (grunt and groan artist) to the list of athletes in the armed service. C. The Green Bay Packers will begin training on August 16. |