Judge — May 19, 1923 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PICKING THE WINNERS Sketches by Weed by Edward Anthony © think that this year the fans will witness the rare spectacle of a team Slugging its way toa pennant in the American L ». That team is Detroit. They would have done it last year, in our opinion, with a little better pitching to help Cobb, Heilman, Veach and the other fence busters. Those sluggers make it unnecessary for the kids to see games through knot holes. They just knock the fences down and afford the kids a real view. The Detroit fence crashers can ure on genuine operation from the co- We can't se Yankee Club as better than a runner-up. Don’t forget that they won by only one game last year. This year, with the exception of Louis, which is ned by: Sister's absence, the Yan- s is stronger and Hug- gins will have the fight of his life. We don't think his pitchers will stand the gaff. Mays is little more than a agnifieent ruin and the drubbing that the tobogganning Hoyt received at the hands of the Giants last fall won't help his confidence any. Bob Shawkey smart pitcher but he is now, like Mays, one of the Elder States- men, and if Huggins works him too often he'll develop a case of slabster’s rheumatiz that a gallon of liniment won't cure. We think the other six American League clubs will finish in this order: St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston. “rTurex were all poor . . « the prophets.” Robert Burton once said. That ought to be revised. It should read, “They were all poor... those that heeded the prophets.” This is particularly true in the case of those that heeded the baseball prophets last year and bet seven to five on the Yanks in the World Series. As the Burt quota- tion is from his “Anatomy of Melan- choly” any doleful Yankee bettor will tell you that the revision we suggest would fit in nicely. He'd also cheer- fully suggest a revision of the sport writers’ features; for these chaps have destroyed his profits and he would enjoy destroying a few prophets him- self. And you can hardly blame James, what 5 Yet I'm const M* gran'ther’s rule was safern’ ‘tis to crow: —James g To which our reply is: ay is most astute, ned to lift my lute And offer this objection to ought to have all the horrible facts in his possession. He ought to know, amc other things, that our first base- ball prophesy—made in The Baseball. Magazine in 1914—was tragically wrong. We predicted that year that the Athletics would wipe up every map in the geography with the Boston Braves. So it wasn’t surprising that the Braves should up and smite the Athletics four times in the samc place and wind up the series before knew it had started. Five or six other writers in the same magazine guessed! wrong too but. that didn’t lessen our offense. We've improved since those days, as witness the fact that we were in the scorned minority that picked the Giants to drown the Huggins outfit in Yankee bean soup last fall. A man ‘t be wrong ways. But even with that and a few other good guesses to our credit we haven't more than a battin average of .167 in the Prophets’ League. And if you want to know the awful truth about a prognostic batting average of 167, lean over and we'll whisper something in your those figures are_only .00178 higher than Hughey Fullerton Poor Hughey! It’s a shame the way the Giants double-crossed him last fall by paying no attention to his elaborate charts, iagrams and columns and columns of figures that proved con- rept to McGraw, that the National Leaguers had than a sore toe in a tight shoe. Hughey did predict that “record-breaking crowds would be on hand to witness The Annual C And that’s someth A man can’t predict everything. loots dive in where ang and we're no d a »r, as the proverb |. So he gnostic plunge to the effect that the é ants will cop the bunting in the older organization while the Detroit Tigers are doing the same thing in the Johnson circuit, if we may use some more newspaperese, The acquisition of Jack Bentley strength McGraw’s pitching staff considers Jack, now that he’s on a diet that restricts him to four steaks aday and not more than six eggs for ast, is down to playing weight 1 that means that his left-handed s fear to tr goes, sell Lowell. ball prophet is without honor in this, or any other, country we shuddered when the boss asked us to write a story predicting the outcome of the current’ big league pennant races. The sport of hazarding a guess, some- times known as venturing a prediction, never agreed with us—or with those who wagered the way we suggested. The ought to know this. He boss The thing you say, however true: If people Unless the There’ saseball dope, old dear, Which would evoke from me a tear, For minus dope it’s plain to m How dull the sporting sheets would be! shoots (or shoot-the-shoots, since they twist and bend so) are due to befuddle many a batsman. Ineid y, Jack is the cleverest man at making runners hug first base that since Sherrod Smith broke His throw to first is one of the most deceptive we've ever looked at. He hardly seems to turn around; and the ball gets started. so