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Show TVI ANAGER Eddie Dyer of the Cardinals has about all the pitchers two teams could use. Your guess would be that Eddie has nothing noth-ing to worry about. But the first section of any manager's job is to worry about something. Two of Manager Dyer's worries now are Johnny Grodzicki and r , Eddie Dyer George Munger. Johnny Grodzicki, fromNanticoke, Pa., is an ex-paratrooper, who Is still working on a shrapnel shrap-nel wound in his right leg. George Munger, passing the officer's offi-cer's school test in the Pacific area, has made such a fine record the army doesn't want to let him go. The main point of this yarn Is that Dyer believes both men could have been two of the best pitchers in baseball. "When I had Grodzicki at Columbus Colum-bus in 1941," Dyer says, "I thought he was the best minor league pitcher pitch-er I ever saw. Six-feet-one, 185 pounds, he had what you might call everything. That season Johnny won 19 games and lost 5 when his record rec-ord might just as well have been 22 wins and 2 defeats. In addition to a fine arm he had both head and heart, but an uncertain right leg due to a shrapnel wound which has been healing slowly. But he is still undiscouraged. In shape Johnny might easily have been a 25 or 28-game 28-game winner. "George Munger, In my book, is one of the best pitchers in Cardinal history. In his last season with the Cardinals in 1944, Munger won 11 games and lost 3. But he was just beginning to find himself. He is now on duty in the Far East and I don't know when we'll get him back. Munger Mun-ger is another who might have led the league." These two are not the only cases. The game through 1946 will give you many others from other clubs. Vets Will Dominate The pennant races of 1946 will feature largely returning players from the service forces. Among those I might mention are Bob Feller, Fel-ler, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Tex Hughson, Joe Gordon, Bobby Doerr, Bill Dickey, Phil Rizzuto, Johnny Mize, Hank Greenberg, Dick Wakefield, Spud Chandler, Charlie Keller, Johnny Beazley, Howie Pol-let, Pol-let, Peewee Reese, Pet" Reiser, Country Slaughter, Terry Moore, Dave Ferriss, Dom DiMaggio, and many, many more. It is from this ex-service list that you will find the pennant winners, the leading hitters and the leading lead-ing pitchers. Tliey will dominate the double show. There will be others who were not in service who will play good ball. Here is an example. In 1945, Snuffy Stirnweiss led the American league hitters with a season's average aver-age of .309. Yet it is the opinion of many smart baseball men that it will take a mark of .360 or .370 to lead the punching parade this season , in the junior circuit. I put this query up to six American league veterans, including Bill Dickey and George Selkirk, who know their way around. There were four or five others from American league clubs. It was also their opinion that the 1945 winning mark of .309 wouldn't finish In the first 12. Pitching Wont Matter "What about the better pitching that is coming in?" I asked. "I mean such men as Feller, Hugh-son, Hugh-son, etc." "This will make little difference," one veteran ansWered. "Hitters like Ted Williams, Wakefield, Greenberg, Green-berg, DiMaggio, Keller ajid many others will still keep on hitting the ball. Good pitching can wreck the ordinary hitter. But it never wrecks the true hitter who knows how to swing a bat and get his hits. "The National league with Phil Cavarretta, Tommy Holmes and others was far ahead of the American Ameri-can league last season. That won't happen again. Watch and see. The American league will take back its old spot as the harder-hitting league, and it will have to face pitching that is just as good." S. American Baseball No one can shake Larry Mac-Phail, Mac-Phail, the Dodgers' owner, loose from the idea that baseball is headed head-ed for a big boom in Latin America Amer-ica and that what we often call "The National Game" will soon be the ' national game of Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba and other oth-er tropical spots. "The answer is simple enough,'' MacPhail says with emphatic gestures. ges-tures. "The kids of these countries are baseball crazy. It is the only ; game most of them want to play. It is the only game most of them care i to talk about. Their knowledge of baseball today is amazing. I'm not : guessing about this, for I've been in the middle of at least part of it. I 'To my mind this will be the best possible build-up for any good-neighbor good-neighbor policy for Latin American friendship. Baseball could do more good in this respect than all the dip-I dip-I lomats we could ever assemble |