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Show 4 4. SPRING TRAINING GOSSIP The battery men. the advance guard of the baseball arrny that will) soon Invade the south, have arrived on the scene I'll- lun- as in years gone by, will continue to play a big part in the winning of a pennant. Without good pitching no team gets very far Major league club owm-rs are well aware of the fact. That is one ro.i-son ro.i-son why a special effort is always made to perfect the pitching to tho highest possible degree. Some Idea of the value of pit b-ing b-ing can bn gleaned from the fact that two major league clubs who nro taking 40 men south ea sh have 19 pitchers in the pollectlOh. While the ratio Is not that great With most of the teams, yet a perns I of tho lineups of the various clubs shows that about one-third of tin-players tin-players taken south In the spring are pitchers. The pitching problem Is the hardest hard-est tusk a manager fa-es each spring. At least a half dozen major league leaders would rest much easier If they felt thplr pitching itaffa Would be aide to carry the burden. Lack of consistent pitching was a severe blow to the St. Louis Cardinals last year. During the first month of the race the Cardinals had only two pitchers capable of i:olng the route. Rickey's team had 'rouble winning a ball game. That :jad start was fatal to the Cardinals' pennant phances. The pitching problem agala confronts con-fronts Kid Oleason of Chicago. He has two great stars in Faber and Kerr, but those two men cannot do all the worg That was proved lost 1 year. . Lack of consistent pitching kept' th Cleveland team from repeating in th.' American league last year. What can Speaker expect from Bagby. Morton. Mor-ton. Uhle and Malls? Only Coveles-klc Coveles-klc stunds out us u certainty. Bitching Is certain to be Clyd Milan's Mi-lan's blggMt worry. If Washington is ablf (o develop a dependable staff the Nationals are certain to be dangerous. dan-gerous. , The Chicago Cubs suffered last year from pitching. Alexander seemed seem-ed to be off his game, and Jim Vaughan was lost through suspension suspen-sion I V Iii the final dash for the National league pennant tho Pittsburg staff faltered with the rest af the team. Tho New York Giants won the pennant and tho world s series because be-cause at the crucial moment thw pitchers came through. Pitching Is the big punch In baseball. base-ball. From now until the opening of the season we will be regaled by stories sto-ries of the bush league phenoms Vet if each major league picks up tWO star pitchers each year among the recruits tried out in the spring it is regarded as a big season. 00 |