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Show iPS?i ' I VHE argument broke into a rash concerning the easiest position to play on a baseball team. We put the debate up to Joe McCarthy, who knows what it is all about, no matter what the position might happen to be. "Why don't you ask a lot of ball players," Joe said, "and get their slant? After Stirn-weiss Stirn-weiss had played third three or four days, I asked him how he liked the Grantland Rice job. 'Great,' he said, but do I still get paid on the first and fifteenth for playing third?' " We accepted Manager McCarthy's McCar-thy's challenge and soon lined up the viewpoints of all the earnest athletes we could corral. In the concensus that followed, the catching assignment was rated the toughest by an extensive margin. mar-gin. What about the pitcher? The pitcher only works every fourth or fifth day, and too often only toils four or five Innings. But the catcher, the better catchers, catch-ers, get few vacations. Yon might talk to Bill Dickey some time about j this and discover the beatings they take around the plate. Catching a hundred ball games a year is harder work than playing any other position for three hundred hun-dred games. All of which leads up to the easiest or softest job on the team. This is where the argument argu-ment started. 'Hot Corner Easiest We talked with the Cardinals, Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, Indians, and several others about the easiest position to play. From the start the players began voting for third and first base. The consensus finally final-ly settled on third base. As one veteran expressed it "I'll tell you about playing third base. On a general average when they slap one at you, it is either a hit or an out but nearly always a hit if you don't handle it Yes, there are bunts to cover, but as a percentage per-centage proposition, third basemen get few errors thrown into their records. rec-ords. It always happens in a hurry at third base and it is all different at short and second. They have room enough and time enough to move around. The third baseman doesn't." The next soft job consensus went to first base. But a first baseman is supposed to be one of the best hitters hit-ters on the club. Charley Comiskey was the first of all the first basemen who left the safety of the bag to cut down a few drives slashed towards to-wards right field. That, 50 years ago, was a daring Innovation. It remained for Hal Chase to prove how an artist could handle first But Hal was too great an artist for his own good along certain devious lines we won't discuss here. Now here is a peculiar angle. Baseball has known more great first basemen and more great second sec-ond basemen than It has ever known shortstops and third basemen. base-men. Just how can you explain this? At first base we have had stars from the' days of Fred Tcnney on, through Frank Chance, Stuffy Mc-Innis, Mc-Innis, Hal Chase, George Slsler, Lou Gehrig, and Bill Terry. Many Stars at Second Second has the longest parade of stars Lajoie, Collins, Evers, Frisch, Hornsby, Gordon, Doerr. But outside of the enduring Honus Wagner, shortstop has given the game few outstanding names. There have been such good ones as Bancroft, Ban-croft, Jackson, Jennings, Tinker, Long, Wallace but only a limited list ranged below Wagner's fame. Third base, voted as the easiest job on the club to hold, should be arrayed and bedecked with great names. The list of good ones is fairly long. The list of great ones very scant. Jimmy Collins, Pie Traynor, Art Devlin, Heinie Groh, Red Rolfe, Bill Bradley, these were among the best. In order to ward off indignant and protesting letters we'll admit in advance that many good names have been left off the list, due mainly to a zigzag memory. The tough spot and the most important im-portant spot on the infield is the combination of short and second. Two fast men here can take pretty good care of the infield, especially those of the Rizzuto-Gordon and the Pesky-Doerr type, not to overlook Marion and his mate on the Cardinals. Cardi-nals. Third base may be the "hot corner" but it also requires less i terrain to patrol. No Room for Alibis The box score is a national institution in-stitution that has been attracting more and more popular interest in the United States for 70 years. It carries compact news to countless count-less millions from the smaller hamlets ham-lets on to the greater cities and the smaller hamlets furnish most of the stars who gather their fame in big league centers. Here it is again with a complete record of runs, hits, errors, strikeouts, stolen bases. It offers no space ior alibis pr excuses. |