Show speaking of apoi sports ts lively ball held cause of dead arms by GEORGE A BARCLAY Is ORE arms have the baseball world worried pennants have been lost in the big leagues this year and ace athletes have become semi invalids because of an epidemic ot of chipped el blows pulled tendons and strained muscles without i precedent in the history of the ga game me scan the list of pitchers involved in arm trouble and see why all CARL HUBBELL worried magnates are shaking their well theres carl hubbell and hal schumacher of the new york giants they are the most recent victims and their absence from the lineup down the home stretch may well have cost the giants the na league pennant lefty groves larm arm went dead a short time after he pitched in the allstar all AU star g game ame old age you might say but informed baseball men will tell you the boston red sox veteran was good for several years yet sad case of diz dizzy deans arm is apparently gone he cant throw a ball overhand without wincing and his speed is only a memory he has been of practically no use to the chicago cubs this year rest may eventually restore some of the cunning but meanwhile owner wrigley can ruminate minate about the he paid st louis for dean bill dietrich who pitched a no hit game for the chicago white sox last year and his cohe colleague a gue clint brown who specializes in able relief pitching have been out oat of uniform since early in the season because of arm trouble bobby feller monte stratton tex carleton Cari eton johnny allen alien van lingle mungo and charley ruffing are other mound notables who have been plagued off and on by sore arms down down in the minors paul dean and schoolboy rowe youngsters burned out long before their time ti meare are trying a pitching comeback that is still a big question mark what is the reason for this pitching situation there are a variety of answers but if you sum them all up find the trouble is due to an accumulation of restrictions that have stacked the cards against the pitchers it all goes back to the days when babe ruth started making home runs stylish and the game was remade into a sluggers free for all first there was the lively ball baseball bigwigs introduced it to encourage hitting then they began to put one restriction after another on pitchers they prohibited the spitball that bad brought immortality to such old timers as ed walsh red faber urban shocker and burleigh grimes they made other trick deliveries illegal in the old days an entire ball game would be played with as few as halt half a dozen balls now it takes at least 50 new balls are always in play and because of their shiny smoothness they are hard for pitchers to put any stuff on formerly it if a ball was slightly scuffed it thrown out of play this gave a pitcher a chance to get by modern training trip schemes now work an unnecessary hardship on the pitcher years ago big league teams meet until the season opened the exhibition games were played solely against minor league outfits and pitchers could take their time rounding into form now there are exhibition games between ma jor league teams alm almost ost as soon as the training season 0 pens opens pitch ers have to face tough batters right away their arms arent ready and anc soreness can they want to win and they bear down before they should it is quite possible that injuries that hat pop up suddenly during the regular season have their origin in just such games when the national league announced last winter that it had adopted a deader ball for the 1938 season many fans hailed it as the b beginning eg inning of organized baseballs return to a normal basis but somewhere along the line there was a hitch the experience of this season has indicated that the new national league ball is practically the same as the one formerly used at least such a conclusion is suggested by the hitting in the two leagues and hitting is the only basis for comparison bonus ball players A BAD case of every man for t hini himself self aggravated by the nuch much discussed bonus system is being blamed for the pathetic collapse of the cleveland indians in the drive for the american league pennant race insiders say that most of the players were signed to contracts this year calling for bonuses contingent on players reaching stipulated batting averages or pitchers winning a certain number of games the arrangement so the story goes tended to make the players too individualistic and ruined u unified ni team play oscar vitt the new manager complained about this system when lie he took charge he insisted early in the he season that all the team knew was slug how much of a difference the bonus system made is difficult to tell the probabilities are that the indians could not have continued to lead the league as they did in the first halt half of the season but contracts without bonus provisions might have had bad a tendency to make the indians more of a team most managers disapprove of the bonus system it was tried with rather discouraging results by the chicago cubs a couple of seasons back one of the most outspoken critics of the system is burleigh grimes manager of the brooklyn dodgers suppose says burleigh that a player signs a contract giving him 1000 or 2000 more if he hits to for the season well he might be going along at a pace until the last month of the season and then start to protect that average ile he might complain about a charley horse and have his leg taped up and stay out of the lineup for a few f ew weeks or the same fellow might do things that conflicted with his managers strategy such as miss missing ing a signal to sacrifice when he thinks he can hit Bur burleighn Burlei leighs glis contentions however are purely hypothetical stalwarts Stal warts TRAINING TRAINING camp technique wh which ich to some extent resembled the spring training system of the major league baseball clubs has prepared the teams in the national professional fess ional football league for its seventeenth e entee nth season six hundred brawny young stal warts candidates tor for places on various teams labored under a hot midsummer sun in training camps from the atlantic seaboard to the middle west to condition themselves for a strenuous season the champion washington red skins including the brilliant sling in sam baugh who met the college all stars selected in a nationwide poll in a preseason pre season title meet M in soldier field chicago did their fall fail conditioning at the ballston baleston Ball ston baseball park at arlington va the pittsburgh pirates rated as the team to beat in this years race since they acquired byron zer white and the cleveland rams W r 7 40 an i 14 4 i 1 w SAMMY BA BAUGH designated as the most ampro improved ed team in the league did their training in their respective cities the brooklyn dodgers pitched camp at the new york agricultural college farmingdale Farmin gdale N Y while the detroit tigers trained at bloomfield mich the new york giants trained at the blue hills country club in orangeburg Orang eburg N Y the green bay packers at green bay wis the chicago bears at delafield wis and the chicago cardinals at morgan park ill heading toward its majority professional fess ional football is now definitely 9 grown rown up and would like to forget its barnstorming barn storming one night stand origin of the early twenties nearly people attended pro games in nine different cities last year promoters are looking for an even bigger attendance this year here and there GERMANY golubs ERMANY has soccer clubs with 0 playing members during internal international dional contests the immense olympic stadium in berlin is jammed with spectators tickets for or big matches are frequently sold out six months in advance bernie moore football coach at louisiana state says booth will be the best blocking back in the country this year nine members ot of the newark bears 1937 club played in the big leagues this season the average double play by way ot of second baseman requires 4 seconds from the time the ball leaves the bat until it lands land S in the first bajema base mahs ns mitt 6 0 western newspaper unload |