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Show THE two somewhat weird and woolly pennant races in the two big leagues belong to the factors that make sport what it is. Thii means its uncer-r uncer-r - ' ymx tainty, its various :e S; breaks of luck, its 4 - : s sudden and baffling I - ' swings. Without this uncertainty, sport , A would be a drab af- '' '' 'air. , Several letters ( '' have come our way V t V'V recently' asking us s'" to exPiain why it is ,-?&A that the Cardinals, GrantlandRice world's champions, have been in last place with the tail-end Giants of 1946 battling for the top? Why the pennant winning Red Sox of last Lyear have been working their tongues out to get a toe hold in the first division? Why the Athletics, who finished 55 games behind last year, are only a few games from the top of the American league? Why Bob Feller and Hal Newhous-er, Newhous-er, the two star pitchers of the last few years, have taken so much punishment? pun-ishment? Why 'Stan Musial, a normal nor-mal .365 hitter, has been trying to pass .200? Why the Dodgers with so many erratic pitchers and only one .300 hitter have been leading or challenging for the top?-. This fusillade of queries goes on and on. The Erratic Element The answer is simple enough. It is the uncertainty of sport and the uncertainty of the human and otherwise oth-erwise animal race, including race horses, harness horses' or greyhounds. grey-hounds. For example, the Cardinals were rated at 3 to 5 this year, the best team In baseball. But who could tell in advance that Musial, a great ball player, would first have an appendix ailment and later on an eye attack? After spending a month with the team in St. Petersburg, we rated the Red Birds the best team, and also the best-conditioned team, we had seen leave the south In years. So did most of the big league managers, Joe Cronin included, and baseball experts who were in the west coast vicinity. Neither Cronin nor Eddie Dyer, two pennant - winning managers, could slip us any angle on the debacle. de-bacle. "Why don't you figure it out?" was their comeback. Which had us stopped in our tracks. Both Red Sox pitching and hitting took the same dive the Cardinals ran across. They were practically the same pitchers and hitters who won both flags a year ago. , This again is what makes sport what it is. Leading Rule Breakers An argument came up reeently as to what sport, game or competition has more rule infractions baseball, football, boxing, golf, tennis, racing, b.ockey, basketball or what? In our opinion the two worst offenders are football, college and pro, and golf. Basketball and hockey are not so far behind, judging from the penalties penal-ties inflicted, but they are not quite up to the two we have named. "Hurry-up" Tost told me once that he doubted there was ever a single football play without a foul that might have been called. This sounds reasonable. In football we have ZZ young active athletes, all under tension, body to body. The four officials are usually high grade, doing their best. But four men can't watch 22 men, scattered all over the field. Holding is the main offense. There is illegal use of hands and arms. There is offside. off-side. There is starting too quickly. There are any number of offenses that a player can commit, often with no intent of breaking any rule. In rule-breaking, holding especially, espe-cially, the pros are subtler than the collegians. They know more. They know how to grab an opponent and let go in the fraction of a second. I get this from ex-collegians who have just turned pro. "We can't match the pros in holding," all of them say. "They are much faster and smarter." Yet if officials begin calling too many penalties they ruin the game. They are accused of trying to hog the spotlight. So most of them try to call only the penalties that count. They'll overlook an offside or a holding penalty that had no effect on the play. This sounds reasonable reason-able enough, unless the sound of the whistle dominated the play. In the matter of rule breaking, football leads them all It is the type of competition that leads to rule breaking, a big part of lt unintentional unin-tentional through overeagerness that leads to holding, offside or starting start-ing ahead of the ball; also illegal use of hands. . Basketball and Hockey Baseball players have little ; chance to break rules with four i tough umpires. Otherwise they 1 probably would be the leaders. The basketball whistle is a mournful mourn-ful sound in the land and hockey has its share of offenders. Track and field is close to 100 per cent clean. It is that type of sport. Polo neeils good officiating, for like foot ball it is a contact game, with iorse or pony thrown in. |