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Show It I Fuller ton's Spring Dope I By HUGH S. FULLERTON. L Offensive Defensive Total Chicago C37 729 13GG l New York CIS 702 1350 i - Cincinnati G19 71-1 1333 Boston 597 717 1314 Philadelphia ... . G05 G92 1297 St. Louis C81 697 127S i Pittsburg 583 6S0 12G3! Brooklyn 590 G37 1227 Here is where the chances of three! National League teams St. Louis,! PItt3burg, and Brooklyn teams that' have shown ruost extraordinary; strength 'in their regular lineups seem to go glimmering. There is a saying in baseball that no team ever has won a championship: without an extraordinary good catcher This is perhaps an exaggeration, but! not much of one. Until we came toj the dope on the National League catch-) crs, it looked as if the Pirates, Cards and to a lesser degree, Brooklyn, had gained so much in strength that they wero real penant factors. The study of the catching departments, however, CSUSC3 their stock td take a sudden I slump. Nor does there seem to he much ot a chance for anyone of these three teams to .show much of an im- provement in the catching department. With only the pitchers left to Btudy it looks as if Pirates, Cards and Brook-! lyn must be counted out of the dope1 championship unless in the figures on the pitchers, they show most extra or-1 dlnary strength. J Chicago, with Bill Killifer, at the helm, during about 135 and perhaps more of the 151 games, certainly shows the class ot the National League. You must remember, also, that a strong cgcher not only gains points for himself, him-self, but adds to the strength of the pitching department enormously. Brooklyn, which In the rough dope appears to have on of the best pitch- ing staffs In the country, certainly will lose much ground because of the fact that the catching talent is mediocre and shows little promise of improving SL Louis which needs pitching above all things, shows only a fair catching staff and the weakness in catching will hurt the nltchinc. Oddly enough, the Giants, a tcami Which has for years shown chronic H weakness in catching, looms up in sec-ond, sec-ond, place. This, of course, is duo to the fact that the Giants in their en-H en-H deavor to purchase a pennant last year, H secured the services of Gonzales and Snyder, two of the first water veterans. In -inverse ratio the strength ot the G-jant pitching staff must show im-provement. im-provement. The World's Champion Reds rank third. Their catching staff runs true tp;Red form. Moran can. use his catch-all; catch-all; Instead of, being as weak as the ersso as to get the, best results from -weakest point of each, catcher, Mor-anra Mor-anra staff as u whole seems to adjust Itself go that ho can utilize tho strong-est strong-est feature of each, man's work. Nor is the liability of injury as se-rious se-rious in the case of Rels and Giants as .It is in tho caso of the Cubs. If GtoiLzalea and Snyder should be hurl, thOGiants still have two capable and I cdrklng catchers, both strong In offen- ' work, even if slightly below par H ; ? jirdefenslve. If Wingo and Rariden '' qfrould be damaged, the Cubs have Al-H Al-H I ' ie'nV But if Killifer should be scrlous-B scrlous-B ' iv crippled, the Cubs would slump im-i im-i i mediately, and the pitching strength would be impaired, n i. ': There is considerable trouble in dopl ling the strength of the Braves in tfce: 'catching department. Gowdy is a nearj great catcher. With some teams he' imight be a great on . With Boston hlsj figures are not inspiring. Further, as I go to press with this dope, there i is u big chance that Gowdy may be transferred to another club before the real season starts. In that event, we will have to makea second study of catching sertugths. The Phils have an extraordinary i amount of strength in the catching de-j '.partmcnt. I am frank to admit that if :that team'figured a little higher in de-j fensive strength, the catching figures would be much more inspiring, ln.i other words, the catchers lose points in value because ot the reflex effect! of .the strength In other positions. It1 lis discouraging work for good catc'h-jers catc'h-jers to handle bad pitchers. If Uie Phils had a' real chance, and the condi-. condi-. tions were not so discouraging, ihe catching strength would show greater great-er iu the figures. oo |