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Show I SPORTLIGH T . Card Castoff Becomes Giant Ace By GRANTLAND RICE PHE STORY of big Jim Hearn is one of the more interesting baseball yarns of 1950. In addition to Its human interest side, it also gives an important sideline on the part that luck or fate or the breaks of tne game bring to many a ballplayer ball-player attempting to keep his grip on the game. Young Hearn was a star at Georgia Tech some years ago. He is a big kid, 6 feet, 3 weighing fine ballplayer has been dropped from big league company for various var-ious reasons that are beyond his control. Hearn's case isn't the only one I've known about. o Case of Sammy Urzetta You may not believe it but Sammy Sam-my Urzetta, present amateur golf champion, holds one of the oddest records in the venerable game. For example, In check'-ip back over past champions recently re-cently I discovered I had played golf with most of them Charles Blair MacDonald, H. G. Whig-man, Whig-man, Findlay Douglas, Walter Travis, H. C. Egan, S. M. Byers, Jerry Travers, R. A. Gardner, W. C. Fownes, Francis Fran-cis Ouimet, Chick Evans, Jess Sweetser, Jess Guiliford, Bobby Jones, Johnny Goodman and Max Marston. In that long line not a one arrived ar-rived unheralded or as unheralded unherald-ed as Urzetta was. Most of those who won were given a chance. Most of them had played winning golf before. Not too much had been heard about Ted Bishop, who won at Baltusrol in 1946. But you knew more than a little about most of the others. Unknowns don't win amateur ama-teur titles as Francis Ouimet won the Open in 1913. But in checking back through pretournament dope I couldn't find anyone giving Sam Urzetta a chance of any sort. That isn't all of the story. In every amateur championship practically prac-tically every winner has to have one or two lucky rounds. I mean that he has to win while not playing play-ing too well. But there was no such rickety playing on the part of Urzetta, who had won the N.Y. state amateur some time before. In round after round he stuck with par or better. 00 Walking into Odds A short while back we were playing play-ing golf with a pair of club-swingers who seemed to take double interest in-terest in all the short holes. One landed a tee shot about 10 inches from the cup and almost picked up a fit. We found out later that both had been insured at 400 to 1 against a hole in one. Which means that they were to get $400 for 1 if they could deposit the ball into the cup in one shot. Well, in the last 16 years the New York World Telegram has put on 16 Hole-in-One-Tournaments. In this time 11,720 players have taken a crack at the mystic tin, firing a total of 58.600 shots in the vague hope of holeing out. How many have found an open door? Just five golfers. Grantland Rice around 200. He also al-so had his share of stuff from the start. He was a good friend of Bobby Jones and played golf in the low 70's at Druid Hills Course. Hearn is one of the nicest young fellows you'll meet. He is on the quiet or reserved side, although friendly enough at all times.' I know a couple of years back that Eddie Dyer had considerable con-siderable confidence in his budding bud-ding young star. Big Jim had one or two pretty fair seasons. Not big seasons. But not too bad. Then a year ago he wasn't winning. win-ning. He won one and lost three last year, then was sent to Rochester Roches-ter to finish out the season. This season Hearn spent most of the time on the bench. He might as well have been left in the minors. He wasn't getting enough work. He lacked control and lack of steady work was largely responsible. Now it could easily have happened hap-pened that the Cardinals again would ship the Georgia Tech star back to the minor patrol. But the Giants took a chance and called him in. The keen eyes of Leo Dur-ocher Dur-ocher had seen things in Hearn's aim, head and heart that others had overlooked. There was no midnight parade pa-rade for Hearn when he arrived with the Giants. He was just another Cardinal castoff. But he wasn't to Leo Durocher. He took Hearn from the bench to the rifle range. He put him to work. In short order the big college boy was one of the star pitchers of the league. Oddly enough, he has been outpitcb-ing outpitcb-ing the leading aces on the Cardinal squad. Just why the Cardinals let such a stout right arm go is beyond us. Eddie Dyer is one of the smartest of the managers. Fred Saigh is a close watchman In the matter of his products. But they let a $100,-000 $100,-000 or a $150,000 pitcher go for $10,000 just as he was heading for the minors again. More than one |
