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Show MY OLD Purdue college pal, George Ade, once Introduced one of the finest of all slogans. It was called, "Flowers for the living." liv-ing." The dead neither know nor care. If any living ball player Is entitled en-titled to flowers at this stage of his career the name Is Melvln Thomas Ott of the Giants. Ott has at least one record that no other ball player carries today, as far as I can locate the vital statistics. Born in Gretna, La in'1909, this young prodigy suddenly showed up with Mc-Graw's Mc-Graw's Giants in 1925 at the age of 16. For 16 years there has been no other It i city marked againsthis name Mel Ott only New York. Mel came from the Bayou district dis-trict straight to the big town. He has never played in a minor league. He was a bat boy in size and years when McGraw saw him and never let him go. "This kid was a big leaguer the day he was born," McGraw once told me. "He doesn't need any minor league schooling." When the young spring of 1940 came riding through gales, sleet, snow and weather blown from the Barren Lands, they said Ott was about through. He was only 31 years old, but he had been around a long time. He was starting slowly slow-ly under killing weather conditions, but he was still out there, hanging around. When the season opened Mel Ott was still on the job and as time moves on, Mel is still up around the .300 class with the old punch. Ott's Career Ott, at his physical peak, is five feet nine inches in height, weighing from 155 to 160 pounds. He was never a Babe Ruth, a Jimmy Foxx, a Hank Greenberg, a Hack Wilson or a Lou Gehrig in physical makeup- . . He always had a queer habit oi lifting his foot from the ground as he started his swing his right foot and then swinging from his left as his right foot promptly settled back to place. It was his own foot action. It wasn't supposed to be "form," but it was the way Ott wanted to play. And it was "form," after all, the "form" of shifting weight It must be "form." For in his 15 years with the Giants, up through 1939, Ott had mauled out 369 home runs and 359 doubles. He had lashed out 2,061 hits, and 791 of these blows had been for extended extra bases. As far back as 1928 Mel plastered 42 home runs. He had hit 25 or more home runs through 10 or 11 years. He had hit over 30 home runs through seven seasons. With the bulk of Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx or Greenberg, Ott would have broken all records. He Is anywhere from 50 to 80 pounds shy in weight while competing compet-ing with the major siege guns. But he won't be far from the 400 home-run home-run mark when 1940 turns in its set of records. He is still something back of Jimmy Foxx and Lon Gehrig, Geh-rig, but don't forget that Mel had to spot them more than 50 pounds, ) which means a lot in long-range hit ting. The Bayou Entry Mel Ott has never been interested in trying for so-called color. He never pops off. He has never tried I to make a headline by some eccen- D trie action. He gets into no brawls with umpires. He has no interest in being a showman. "I just happen to like baseball," he tells you. "If I'm anything at all, write me down as a ball player." If Ott isn't a ball player, there are no ball players. Shy, retiring, he ducks the spotlight. But the main answer is that Mel has batted In more than 1,400 runs from something over 2,000 hits, with a 15-year average, up to this season, of .315. I don't believe the fan crowd, at large, appreciates Mel Ott This goes for New York, especially. They take him for granted. They take him for granted because he never breaks training, never folds up on the job, always plays his game to the limit i It is always "Good old Mel. He's always there." But not being a nut or a headline seeker, never caring to be a showman, the mob forgets how long "good old Mel" had always been there. They forget that he has lambasted over 20 home runs a year for 12 consecutive years that he has passed the 30 home-run mark for seven years. Even big Hank Greenberg Green-berg has passed the 30-homer mark only five years. In addition to all this, Mr. Mel Ott is quite an outfielder. He can cover his full share of terrain under fire. Thirty-one isn't old. Lefty Grove Is 40. But Ott is in his sixteenth major league campaign, and through all these years he has given everything he had to give, with nothing like a loafing moment |