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Show V 1 lCMATLAND If TT ALWAYS has been our belie! that the time to compare athletes ath-letes Is at the end of their careers. For example, why try to compara led Williams, after five seasons, with Ty Cobb's 24 seasons? sea-sons? Why try to compare com-pare Bobby Jones, retired for 16 years after winning win-ning 13 national and international championships, with Byron Nelson who so far has won 3? And don't Ty Cobb forget that Jones ran 1-2 In the U. S. Open eight out of nine years. Ted Williams and Byron Nelson have many years left in which they may rise to even greater heights, or for one reason or another suddenly sud-denly fall away. I recall just about the outbreak of the war when more than a few were placing Joe DiMaggio above Trls Speaker as an all-around outfield out-field star. DiMaggio was and still is a great ball player. But even Joe's most vehement supporters today to-day wouldn't place him above the flight of the Gray Eagle, the class of all outfielders in the air or along the' ground, who could also hit from .350 to .386 in his better seasons through a long stretch of time. Take Ty Cobb and Ted Williams. Few pitchers could. Ted Williams is the longer, harder hitter. Bui how many remember that Ty Cobb led the American league nine years in a row that he led the American league in 12 out of 13 consecutive seasons. Think thai one over. What hitters were in Cobb'i road? What was their class? Practically Prac-tically no one except Shoeless Joe Jackson, Napoleon Lajoie, Trii Speaker, Babe Ruth, Wahoo Sard Crawford, Bobby Beach and a few of that ash-tinted ilk. I see they are now comparing Bob Feller and Walter Johnson, certainly two of the greatest. No one can tell me that Bob Feller or anyone else had Johnson'B speed. Feller has a greater variety. vari-ety. But Johnson's speed was enough. They usually beat him 1 to 0 or 2 to 1 and even working with a weak-hitting outfit, he still could win more than 30 games a year pitching against some of the great hitters of all time. But none of these great hitters was on Old Barney's side. The idea is that Johnson has already turned in his 20-year record. Feller still has many years to go. Feller isn't working with much of a ball club, either. He is to a certain extent in Johnson's spot. Johnson, pitching for the Athletics in those days could have won 40 games more than once. Feller, working with the Red Sox, could be another 40-game winner. There will be time enough later on to rank Johnson and Feller. 'Old Pete' Alexander If you talk to hitters who faced him and who have been around, they won't nominate Walter Johnson John-son or Bob Feller as the top master mas-ter of the pitching tribe. They won't give you Cy Young who won 510 or Christy Mathewson. Their nominee is an entry known as Grover Cleveland Alexander, also known as "Old Pete." Working with the lowly Phillies, Alexander won 31 games in 1915, 33 games in 1916 and 30 games in 1917, a total of 94 games in three consecutive years with a ball club that never belonged outside of Alexander. In 1916 he pitched 16 shutout games, most of them in the Phillies' Phil-lies' bandbox park. Through six years, he had an earned run average aver-age under two runs per game. As a rookie in 1911 he won 28 games with the lowly Phillies. Alexander was a stretcher bearer with the army In 1918, one of the tough jobs of any war. He then had been pitching seven years. On his return to the Cubs in 1919 and 1920, he allowed 1.72 and 1.91 earned runs per game, an incredible incredi-ble performance. Through his career Old Pete had no interest in any form of training. He happened hap-pened to be an eccentric genius, a great artist, which so few are. He knew exactly where the ball should go to certain hitters, and he could put it there too. Johnny Evers, who had batted against the best, once told me that Alexander was the only pitcher he ever faced who made him feel like throwing his bat away. "I knew how useless it was," Evers said. Cardinal Class Overlooking the boisterous and heartfelt boos from Brooklyn, the Cardinals have been the class of the league from thp start. They have had no better ball players than Dixie Walker and Pete Reiser and Pewee Reese. But no sane baseball follower can tell you that the hustling Dodgers have the class to match Stan Musial, Marty Marion, Country Slaughter, Red Schoendienst, Terry Ter-ry Moore and Whitey Kurowski. |