Show scein seeing big league iff ur u LL by BILLY EVANS riter big BIB laggue od and gen general a ral manai jer of the th cleveland alv indians indian an umpires job at best Is a colorless le ss one though sometimes made more 13 spectacular and less drab by the olor color of 0 the individual salte 0 loughlin with Ws his immortal strike tuh tall I 1 had bad lots of color there hive been and still are others liers ot but he be la Is perhaps our best example we have bad an abu abundance n d a n c e of ca colorful lor players tn in recent years ty cobb babe ruth kuth tris speaker frank frisch hack wilson stanley harris dozens of others but few umpires are what can be called call ed spectacular ular there ther e Is little enough of the dramatic in call calling lug balls and strikes and waving them out or calling them sate safe the ball players placers can shine in the fi field eld at the bat and on the base pat paths b S they have their batting averages their fielding averages pitching avera averages es and stolen base records they may win pennants and world series hit home borne runs with the bases loaded and pitch no lut lilt games they often become heroes and national idols overnight as in the case of stanley liar flat rs the boy manager who won a worlds championship his first year as manager but the uni who gives a hung hang about the umpire all lie does dof s Is see that the game Is played arid and played placed according to the rules that right did you ever hear anybody cheer for an umpire so walsh famous pitcher who tried umpiring after lie he was through as a pitcher objected to the job because us as tie lie said it was all jeers arid and no cheers ile he had been used to cheers no alongside the player the umpire Is quite a buin humdrum drum individual and yet I 1 liked the job im pr prud proud ud to feel that I 1 am still a part of our great national game arid and 1 I too I 1 say it not hot boastfully can feel a little pride in rn my y own record my own averages in other words besides its as jack sherl dau dan told me and tim hurst has more than once joh jokingly angly remarked you cant beat the hours no you cant beat the file honis three oliree to five although my own hours oil off the field were not leisure hours but were spent in pounding the old typewriter turning out sport copy for newspapers arid and back of it all I 1 get a feeling of immense imme ise satisfaction that I 1 am a part of this great institution of baseball and have seen it grow from comparatively feeble proportions to its glant giant present day status and I 1 lieve learned quinea lot in my twenty five years in the big leagues I 1 have learned a lot ab about u t human nature and mot mob psychology c ha I 1 ngy grid and that sort of thing and I 1 have haq learned a lot about baseball perhaps an experience as lengthy as mine entitles entities a man tu to some opinion perhaps you ou will agree that although I 1 dont play baseball base hase lall liall my iny constant con tact with it and with the players gives me an opportunity even greater than th the e active players to judge judee baseball ability does it sound illogical when I 1 say that perI perhaps laps I 1 am in a better position post lon to judge the merits of a particular star than one of ills his teammates or one of his opponents Is for this renson reason if for no other As an umpire my work was pretty evenly divided among the eight teams in the american america u league an active player can judge an opponent only on that opponents performance against him As umpire I 1 have had bad the opportunity of seeing how bow john smith performs si seven clubs each team plays each of the other teams about twenty two games in the course of an ordinary season so that the washington club let us say tins hits twenty two opportunities tuni ties during the year of watching dabe babe ruth play piny I 1 may have more or less games than that to umpire with V new ew york as one of the teams but I 1 have b ave the opportunity ot of seeing how anbe rautu hits in every ball baell park tn in the league I 1 want to make inake this clear because later on I 1 ami am going to to name my all time allstar all star baseball twin team and ilic then n I 1 am going to give my own conception conce pilon of the ideal baseball player pl it may be argued that my job in the american league prevented presented my seeing many ial national leaguers lu lit sie irlon it lon tion cut but at various times I 1 have seen deen them all ii both th 0 in and out of world series and this combined with the figures fi aires in the old record books ought to qualify me in some rome respect as a competent judge 11 syndicate |