| OCR Text |
Show 7HAT sort of baseball property fell to the lot of Bob Hanne-gan Hanne-gan and his St Louis associates recently? re-cently? The answer is a Cardinal outnt that still will be extremely dangerous next season. Eddie Dyer got the shock of his life when he returned to St Louis j; 'ast spring to find Stan Musial a sick f a , 5: man and the better c 1; part of his pitching V (QS Si staff, including m i ' si Howie Pollet and .' KJ f t Murry Dickson, un-; un-; i :fm fit for winning jf.'C''"' action. Through the ' first weeks of the S : , season a team that jj'. looked to be the pick of both leagues DYER couldn't beat the Crab Apple Blues from the Fried Chicken circuit. Musial, normally a .360 hitter, hovered around the .130 mark for several weeks. Pollet still had a kink in his left shoulder and Dickson was about as bad. Schoendienst couldn't hit and Terry Moore was lame. So In place of Jumping the gun and taking an. early lead, the odds-on favorites were parked In last place. From this dismal start the Cardinals moved Into second place, but the Dodgers had too much of a lead to cut down. The Cardinals are not getting any younger. $ut they are still a much better ball club than they looked to be for most of last year. They still have Country Slaughter one of the best. They still have Musial and Marion. Whitey Kurowskl may be fading, but he is still a valuable man. Terry Moore is over the hill, one of the star outfielders of all time. The pitching staff is the main problem. But Red Munger has the stuff to be a 25-game winner. Dyer rates Munger one of the best pitchers he ever has handled. He will be a better pitcher next season that he was last year. Jim Hearn, the ex-Georgia Tech star, will be one of the best next campaign at least he should be. Joe Garagiola and Del Rice are two good catchers. But to beat qut the Dodgers and the Braves the Cardinals till need help another good . Inficldcr, at least one more good outfielder and two good pitchers. The Dodgers should be even better bet-ter and so should the Braves. Dyer has two tough teams to roll back, two Improving teams who have more youth and more speed. Best Heavyweight Fights In the wake of the last heavyweight heavy-weight fight between Joe Louis and Joe Walcott, the battle of the Joes, there is still a hum of gossip concerning con-cerning the best of all the heavyweight heavy-weight fights. The records show there haven't been too many such thrilling encounters. The top of all time was the Demp-sey-Firpo, two-round, hurly-burly in New York that never had an equal where a million dollars and the title were hanging on two or three seconds. This was the Big Brawl, more than 20 years ago. Before' this, the meeting between be-tween Jim Corbett and Jim Jeffries Jef-fries had aU the thrills and all the color that anyone could ask for. Corbett, far in front, bad the fight won until Jeffries finally final-ly nailed him. But most of the heavyweight fights have been on the drab side. Corbett had no trouble against Sullivan. His battle against Bob Fitzsimmons was entirely different. Here was another thriller with Corbett well in front until Fitz nailed him in the so-called solar plexus, in the 14th round. Jeffries Jef-fries had little trouble with Fitz later on. Then Jeffries retired. From that point on, there was no sizzling action. Jeffries was a fat, bald-headed starter against Jack Johnson at Reno. Johnson was a weary, disgruntled fighter against Willard in Havana, and Willard vas a set-up for Dcmpsey at Toledo. Dempsey was a big thrill until be started meeting boxers. He was wrecking all the heavyweights until he ran across Tom Gibbons and Gene Tunney, where in 35 rounds he had only one knockdown. Killing punchers don't care for good boxers. They never have and they never will. A hard puncher can't get set against a good boxer who knows how to handle himself and keep out of the road. Harry Greb could have done better bet-ter against any heavyweight than he could against a Tiger Flowers, or some smaller, faster opponent Greb loved the slower moving targets. He met such fine heavyweights as Gibbons Gib-bons and Tunney, until he began going blind. He wanted Dempsey but Jack never wanted Greb. Joe Louis has had trouble in the past with Tommy Farr, Godoy and Bob Pastor. But Joe also has taken part in more than one fantastic contest. con-test. His finest fight was the second Max Schmeling encounter. Louis has had several exciting excit-ing contests because he couldn't quite absorb a right-hand punch to the bead. This has seemed to be his only weak point lie always al-ways came back, but he was till In trouble. Just how be would have made out against Jack Dempsey la somethlngt I wouldn't know. |
