WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 1951
12
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
PAGE FIVE
By ALAN MARSHALL Daily Kansan Sports Editor
We're beginning to wonder when the baseball squad is going to to get a decent playing field. No one seems particularly worried about the Varsity diamond—no one, that is, except the players.
Just about every major sport at K.U. is well housed except baseball. Memorial stadium provides ample facilities for both football and track. Hoch auditorium has been nearly sufficient for basketball and as soon as the new fieldhouse is built, the cagers can play to crowds upward of 15,000 fans. Even the swimming team has a new pool. That takes care of everybody but the baseball team.
Each season the hardball aspirants work out faithfully on the uneven, eroded, rocky soil they call their home field. The infield is all dirt—not a speck of grass on it—and left field falls off into a gulley. Right field extends out for maybe 225 feet and then suddenly runs into a huge dirt embankment. Only center field is what could be called sufficient.
But that left field is the greatest. It's just the sort of thing Pete Reiser would love. Instead of slamming headlong into a solid wall, the Dodger gardner could make a swan dive into the gulley, still clinging to the ball when the ambulance arrives.
When K.U. played Emporia Monday a snow fence was erected to mark off the outfield. Red Hogan, Varsity coach in 1950, can remember the time at Nebraska last year when an outfielder retreated until his "back was to the wall." Then he simply reached over it and snagged a home run ball.
The backstop is fairly adequate. At least there appear to be no holes in it. But there are no dugouts. The players have to sit on hard wooden benches while the spectators get to bob up and down on temporary bleachers. Who gets the better deal of the two?
We wonder what it takes to get the field reconditioned. About the best the University has done so far is to drag it once in a while and occasionally mark it off. But then last Saturday we saw Hub Ulrich, the varsity coach, himself measuring off the bases for an intrasquad game.
It's disgraceful to invite Big Seven teams to play on the field. Counting on the bad bounces that necessarily result from the rough surface, the gulleys, the terraces in the outfield, our guests must be reluctant to play in Lawrence.
We'd like to see a little of the money thus far spent on "other" items used to whip the diamond into shape. It could be done with a few loads of good dirt, some new sod, a roller, maybe a grader, and sufficient cash. It's highly probable that local merchants would be willing to donate the lumber for an outfield fence, just as long as they get a little advertising out of the deal. That may be against University policy, but at least it's an idea.
In fact, the whole thing may be against University policy, but it's still an idea.
— K.U. —
Late entries in the 26th annual Kansas Relays included a sixman squad from the University of Iowa, Meet Director Bill Easton said Tuesday.
The Iowans entered two relays, the quarter-mile and mile. All six men, Dean Dence, Duane Dietz, Bob Henard, Lou Mathis, Gary Scott, and Leonard Sykes, were listed as relay entries but only four will run in each event. Henard also entered the broad jump
Minor Leagues Enter 'Critical Year' With 'Courage, Confidence And Hope
By GEORGE M. TRAUTMAN
President, National Association of Minor Leagues
Columbus, Ohio (U.R.)—The National association of Professional Baseball Leagues, more popularly known as "the minors," is entering a critical year with courage, confidence and hope.
Certainly, the minors have lost clubs and a few leagues since the 1950 season. Records in the Columbus bus office show 1,009 minor league players of 1950 now in the service of the United States. This figure naturally does not include those prospects who were coming up and who might have made the grade in the minors this year.
Club officials and league officials who have been able to survive the drain on manpower deserve a vote of confidence and they will receive it from this office.
"anniversary" year in baseball is 1951. This is the golden anniversary of the minors as well as the 50th anniversary of the American league. The National league is celebrating its 75th birthday this year.
There are 50 minor leagues operating this year with 370 clubs as compared with 57 last year with 432
Ex-Card Boss Wants No More Baseball Jobs
By OSCAR FRALEY
New York (U.P.)—Fearless Fraley's facts and figures:
A special department has been established in the minor leagues to encourage the promotion of special
By OSCAR FRALEY
The week of April 15 will mark the official start of the golden anniv- ersary with all leagues and clubs participating. "The American way —baseball today!" is the official theme for the 1951 campaign.
features in keeping with the "birthday" year. The 1951 season is being signalized as an anniversary year and not as a "celebration" in view of the world situation.
Attendance on opening day is being emphasized and fans throughout the country are urged to visit their local parks frequently during the coming season. I hope that our minor league parks may be the assembling place for thousands of the men, women and children, seeking wholesome recreation in our minor league communities.
They start the long major league grind today but Eddie Dyer, sitting it out after five years on the St. Louis Cardinal bench, isnt having any.
Stalin Peak, 24,590 feet in the Palir mountains of southernmost Russia, is the highest in the Soviet Union.
"I appreciate what baseball did for me and it's a great game, but I have no ambition for any job in baseball," Dyer advises from his Houston, Texas real estate office.
Dyer stayed one year longer than he planned, anyhow. Houston Eddie, who resents implications that he was fired, had intended to step down at the end of 1949. "But after we blew the pennant on the last day of the season," he reveals, "a delegation of players talked me into staying through 1950 and give it one more crack"...
Don't count battlefield out of the Kentucky derby because of his prospect pursue defeat by Uncle Miltef. That was a six furlong affair and hardly a true test for the mile and a quarter rose run. The big test comes Saturday when they run the mile and sixteenth Wood Memorial at Jamaica. Since the Wood's inaugural in 1925, six winners have gone on to cop the big race at Churchill Downs—and any of the place and show oatbags are given a good chance, too...
Strikes and spares: The records prove that if you are good enough to get close to a perfect 300 bowling score, you usually are good enough to make it instead of coming just close. The American bowling congress has made awards for 153 perfect 300 games this season—and has approved only 74 games of 299 and but 64 of 298...
Yanks Depend On Phil Rizzuto
New York (U.P.)-The little man was smiling as he contemplated his baseball past and looked ahead confidently to his future.
"I'm walking on a sunny cloud," said Phil Rizzuto. "And I should have quite a few years left—if I don't run into injuries."
That was last winter, after he had led the New York Yankees to the world championship and been named the most valuable player in the major leagues.
So the Yankees are praying for another of the miracles which have helped the club continually during two roaring years under Casey Stengel. If they don't come up with this one more, you can write them off in the 1851 pennant chase.
Today it's different. The clouds are dark and stormy, for the superb little shortstop has developed a strained back which may keep him out of the lineup opening day. There's no certainty, at the present, how serious it might become, or how recurrent it might be.
They don't show the manner in which he glues together that Yankee middle, the fire and dash with which he peerlessly plays his position and the stern resolve the little guy builds in larger, more muscular athletes wearing the Yankee flannels.
In 1949 Rizzuto was great. In 1950 he was terrific. Last season he hit a resounding .324, his best all-time batting mark, and posted two American league defensive records. These were the acceptance of 288 chances without error over a string of 58 consecutive games. It shattered the marks compiled by Eddie Joost of the A's in 1947-'48 when he went 42 games with 226 errorless chances.
Berra-Campanella Contest Should Climax This Season
But the records consist of cold figures which actually prove little.
Automobile registrations in the United States totalled 48,484,000 in 1950, an increase of nine per cent over 1949.
New York (U.P.)—The much-discussed question of whether squat Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees or chunky Roy Campanella of the Brooklyn Dodgers was the best catcher in baseball appears to be ready for settlement in the 1951 season.
Catchers with the stamp of greatness have been scarce since the war but suddenly these two stand firmly on the threshold of mitt and mask immortality. The rapidly approaching season could be the payoff for the one which does the standout job.
Certainly each has his claims. The overall capsule comment seems to be that Campanella has a definite defensive edge, at least in the throwing department, while Berra is the better hitter. One would seem to counterbalance the other and leave them on almost equal footing.
Berra has a five-year major league batting average of .301. That gives him a comfortable edge over Campanella's three-year average of 278. Yogi also had a comfortable margin in the important runs-batted-in division last year, 124 to 89, but it should be remembered that he played in 25 more games than Campanella.
Any pitcher in the national league will tell you not to overlook the powerful Dodger catcher when you speak of batting ability. Robust Roy banged out 31 homers last season, while Berra hit but 28. Campanella gave evidence of his power many times, like the afternoon in Cincinnati when he banged out three homers—one of them the longest in the history of Crosley field.
Judging them defensively, you have to give the nod to Campanella. His marksmanship against base runners is uncanny. Last season he nailed 32 of the 48 men to steal on him and one of the high spots of the 1949 World Series with the Yankees was his whipped peg to third which caught scurrying Phil Rizuzuto when he took to a big lead.
"I never saw anything like that throw," confessed the amazed Scocter.
Yet Berra, once regarded as a defensive clown, is making strong strides forward in this department. In the 1947 series against the Dodgers, Brooklyn ran him dizzy Berra was afraid to fire to second, and when he did the ball usually wound up in center field.
But two years ago the Yankees hired Bill Dickey, one of the real immortals behind the bat, to come back as a coach. And, under Dickey's guidance, Berra has progressed into a defensive catcher who, if not brilliant, is highly competent.
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