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Show WHY SOME'SPORT EXPERTS GO MAD Morale Is What Makes or Breaks Baseball Team. "All that we men who follow the writing of baseball as a profession can go by In selecting a possible pennant pen-nant winner la the pitching and other defensive strength added to the batting, bat-ting, or what we :all run-scoring power," admits Bozeman Bulger, veteran vet-eran sports writer, In the Farm Journal. Jour-nal. "There Is no way of foreseeing team spirit or that Indefinable feeling that ball players call 'class.' By that they mean a combination of what the army would term 'morale' and 'esprit le corps.' "Christy Muthewson once gave me a description of this elusive quality that Is, perhaps, more understandable. understand-able. "'The feel that a team must have Is some-thing like that you have when you put on a brdnd-new suit of clothes some morning right after shaving, shav-ing, and go down to the dining room wearing a necktie that you like. Every man has experienced that at some time or other. The feeling Is a sort of self-assurance, well-being and fonfldence. At the same time It does not underrate a similar feeling In others. That feel Is class. Get what I mean?' "I did, but I am not so sure that I have been able to pass it along. "The trouble with us In making choices In baseball Is that we try to apply mathematics and logic. And. as Crover Hartley, the old catcher, says, 'she simply won't lodge.' "The human element In the game Is so preponderant that most of the other factors may be tossed out of the window. Its vagaries account for a large part of the popularity of basebnll. "Itlght now, for example," It Is the general opinion of most baseball people peo-ple that the Yanks will again make a one-team rnce cf the American league season ; that the National league will be a hot scramble all summer .with the Cardinals, Pirates. Giants, Cubs, Reds and possibly Braves and Robins having a chance. "What may happen such things have occurred In the past Is that some club In the National league will Jump out In front and. never be caught, and In the American league the Yanks will stumble, allowing the Athletics, the Wnshlngtons And the Tigers to turn the rare Into a wild scramble." |
