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Show SPOR T LIGHT . . The Fan Likes His Hero Humble I By GRANTLAND RICE TT HAS BEEN SAID and written often in the past that we have the habit of overboosting our stars. We crown them with too much laurel and flatten them beneath too many olive boughs. We lift too many av- erage guys inio more prominent spots than they de-serve. de-serve. To me, it seems it is often the opposite way. I happen hap-pen to know how the British take care of their old heroes. he-roes. The British Introverts and Extroverts You are what you are born to be. For example, the extreme in extroverts ex-troverts was Sweeney, the old Yankee Yank-ee catcher. Sweeney always gave his best. This particular day he hustled but got the worst of the breaks. The crowds booed Sweeney with considerable consid-erable venom. That night a few of us were telling Sweeney about the tough break he got. "Oh, I did all right," Sweeney said. "Didn't you hear that fellow who was applauding me?" Here was one against five thousand. That's extroverting to a high degree. de-gree. Then there was the Red Sox-Cardinal Sox-Cardinal world series. Ted Williams Wil-liams finally bunted to left field against the Cardinal defense, Ted was safe and when the inning was over the left-field stands gave him an ovation. They kept on cheering. Williams never tipped his cap. "Why didn't you tip your cap?" I asked him that night. "I tried my best," Ted said wistfully. wist-fully. "I wanted to show them how I felt." What Makes the Phillies Win? Mr. Robert Carpenter's and Mr. Eddie Sawyer's Phillies have quite naturally absorbed their share and a little more of the season's baseball base-ball gossip. After their unexpected jHmp last season, they were expected by many to hold their third-place third-place spot, and by just as many others to lose a notch and probably prob-ably finish fourth. For, after all, they had the Dodgers, Cardinals, Card-inals, Braves and Giants to handle. han-dle. I know Eddie Sawyer was none too confident last spring at Clearwater Clear-water that his team could finish third again. A year ago, Roberts had won 15 and lost 15. Simmons had won four and lost 10 at the end of the campaign. Miller was still in the minors. But look at what happened: happen-ed: by the middle of August, Roberts, Rob-erts, Simmons and Miller had won 39 games between them and had dropped only 15. This, in the main, is the story of the Phillies for 1950. But it isn't the entire story for one reason the rest of the team had also improved. Simmons and Roberts wouldn't have won all those games with the Phillies of 1949. They were with a much better ball club. In what way? Well, for example, there's Del Ennis. A year ago En-nis En-nis hit 25 home runs and drove over 110 runs. By the" middle of August this year Ennis had 27 home runs and had driven in over 100 runs. t die ii e i u wuiamp-Grantland wuiamp-Grantland Rice pers "Old Bill" "Good old Harry" etc. For the better part we knock their brains out. Even in their prime Dempsey, Arcaro, DiMag-gio, DiMag-gio, Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Hans Wagner, Gene Tunney. I never heard anyone boo Babe Ruth maybe may-be they have but I've heard them boom the others viciously. There are several reasons for this. The average guy is just an average guy. He isn't going very far in any direction. He doesn't like to see anybody get beyond his reach. "The reason 'Casey at the Bat' was so popular," DeWolf Hopper told me years ago, "was because the pitcher made a monkey out of the great Casey." "A Babe Ruth strikeout drew even greater cheers than a Babe Ruth home run. The more popular writers writ-ers knock everybody. They are not interested always in fact. They know the mob likes to read the rap not the boost." There was a night in St. Louis when I spent a few hours with Ted Williams. Ted was bitter. "I'm leading the league," he said, "in home runs batting average runs driven in. I'm hustling the best way I can. Why do they still boo me?" "Just a minute," I said. I went back to my room and brought Ted aack two verses. The theme was "They boo Arcaro and DiMaggio why shouldn't they boo me?" Ted laughed. "I never thought of it this way," he said. "This is great." But he was just as sore the next time they booed him. The only fine competitor I know who laughs at his knockers or booers is Arcaro. Ar-caro. "I know . how stupid they are," Eddie says. "Stupid and dumb and crooked. They expect me to ride for them. To win every race. I give the best I have in every race. But there are times when you get a kick out of knowing they have lost a few dollars." i |