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Show TF you will pardon us for pointing, big league baseball today has an extremely high average of leadership leader-ship in its managers now after the golden fleece. The 1948 crop can match anything we have known in baseball. As they will figure largely in the headlines of the new year they should be worth Just a bit more space than they have received to-date. "Who are they?" Even If you don't remember, they include Joe McCarthy of the Red Sox. Bucky Harris of the Yankees and Lou Bou-drcau Bou-drcau of the Indians. It might be Steve O'Neil of the Tigers also belongs. be-longs. We are not so well acquainted acquaint-ed with his work. It might be that Connie Mack can be Included In this list we mean 1948 the only year that matters now. You can throw out all the others. The American league battle will be a hand-to-hand, throat-cutting duel between McCarthy and Harris. Har-ris. It ought to be. They have most of the good ballplayers. McCarthy Is a brilliant manager. But don't underrate Harris, the most human leader of the lot Harris can handle his squad, and, when you ask him a question point-blank, he answers an-swers point-blank, protecting nobody, no-body, telling you the truth as he sees it. Harris is a rarity I haven't seen ilnce the days of John J. McGraw. McGraw, as I knew him, was a helpful help-ful friend when you needed a story. 3o is Harris. Managers Need Players Boudreau, a great ballplayer, has never had the material to prove his place. Boudreau might have churned churn-ed up a mess of trouble this season, if the Yankees and Reds hadn't reached out and lassoed most of the good floating material. A fellow can be honest, have an honest opinion, and still be wrong. In the opinion of this restless roamer, the best manager in the National league Is Billy South-worth South-worth of the Braves possibly the best manager in baseball today. Next to Southworth. we put Eddie Dyer and Leo Durocher on level terms. Both are something better than good managers. We tike Dyer's system of handling his men and working with umpires better but we can be quite wrong here. Burt Shotton is one of the great managers of baseball. Rickey should have given him 50 per cent of every dollar he took in through 1947. For all of that Durocher is an able leader. He isn't a McCarthy, a Harris Har-ris or a Southworth, but he Is good enough. Mel Ott has another chance to prove his place. Ott is one of the most likeable persons in the game today. Charley Grimm, Johnny Neun, Bill Meyer and Ben Chapman are are good managers. With better material, they might be much better bet-ter managers. But they will chuck In a number of grenades when the Cardinals, Dodgers, Braves and Giants come along. Florida, the Beautiful Florida may have many things that other states lack and that includes in-cludes California. In the Ever-glades, Ever-glades, for instance, the state that Ponce de Leon helped make famous has the last frontier of sport, the most famous 10 thousand square miles In the United States. Here, within a brief whirl of the social softness and glamour of Palm ' Beach and Miami Beach, you can come upon both beauty and savage wildness, fang and claw, the rattlesnake rattle-snake and moccasin, the copperhead and the coral snake, the puma or what is known here as the panther, bear up to 400 pounds or more; deer, alligator, egret pelican, heron and crane, almost every known variety of bird life and fish beyond all imagination. ima-gination. In one day's haul in a small boat we returned with 12 varieties of fish. The boat was half full of fish by 2 o'clock. There were wild duck and geese flying overhead and there , was qunll In the dryer spots. The Jungles of India and Africa ; have nothing to match the variety or beauty of the Everglades or its look of wildness In certain sectors. There are no tigers, lions, elephants ele-phants or leopards around. But the puma or panther, ranging nine feet from tip to tip, weighing close to too pounds, la a replica of the West's mountain lion. The puma Isn't a tiger or a leopard. It Isn't even a Jaguar, but It la still noth-I noth-I Ing to meet on a narrow trail. I The mangrove swamps and ghost Islands here can get you lost In 10 ' minutes, lost beyond recall, without I a guide. I was lost In less than 10 minutes. "Would I ever find my way back?" I I asked, after clearing a few mangrove man-grove spots. "Not In a hundred years," my guide said, "unless you can beat a 1,000-to-l shot." Florida has something that toe many of Its people never have appreciated. ap-preciated. It Is about time the; understood. For what they have li Invaluable In the long run a mor Important part of ths nation that Washington, D. C |