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THE NEWBERRY SUN, NEWBERRY. S. C. Gran Hand Rice "I was never 'T'HE discussion involved a young ■ l - fellow by the name of Stirnweiss, the Yankee second baseman. Th« general agreement was that his fine 1944 record placed him on top of all second basemen from both major leagues. Especially his base ruiv> ning in a year where base running was moving back with the Great Auk among the extinct species. At this point I be gan to think of the greatest percentage base running of all time. A short while later I was lucky enough to run into the holder of this record, a tall, slen der fellow by the name of Max Carey. “No,” Max said, much worried about even the fast and smart Stirnweiss breaking my two-year record. As I recall it 1 made 54 attempts to steal one sea son and got away with 52 of these. The next year I tried 52 steals and got by with 48. So out of 106 at tempted steals 1 was thrown out only six times, completing what you might call 100 jaunts from first to second. I think my average for those two years was around .96 per cent. “As you get older you begin to think more about any record you might have made. In my opinion base running is far more impor tant than many managers seem to think it is. You’ll see good hitters who get on pretty often, who are fast enough, stealing maybe three or four times a year. Clubs fail to realize that good base stealers can upset a pitcher more than almost any other factor. “I’ll tell you why,” Mercury Max continued. “I never tried to steal off a catcher in my life. I ignored the catcher completely. I always stole off the pitcher, getting my lead when it was too late for him to change his pitch. Don’t think this helped him any the next time I got on. For one thing it broke up his concentration and a pitcher’s complete concentration is a big part of his job. It wasn’t easy for him to be thinking of the runner on first and also putting that ball where he wanted it to go. Base Running Wanted “I know the fans like base run , ning, a lot more base running than they are getting today. “Who is the baUplayer that so many rate as the greatest of all time? His name is Ty Cobb. Cobb was a great hitter, but he was just as good a base runner. And one of the main things all old timers re member about Ty Cobb was his bril liant base running that upset many a defense. Cobb would steal from 60 to 96 bases each year. His total, as I recall it now, is close to 900 steals. You can understand how many games all this must have won. Cobb ran much wilder than I ever tried to. His idea was not only to get an extra base but also to crack the morale and steadiness of the catcher, the pitcher and the infield. Now and then he made hopeless at tempts, just to keep them guessing. “Yes, it was Cobb’s base raning they always talk aboat. Yon re call in the recent world series in St. Louis what so many were talking a boot? It was the 1931 series where Pepper Martin starred to beat the Athletics, and they were talking about Pepper’s base running. “As you know John McGraw and Ed Barrow always picked Honus Wagner as the greatest ballplayer of all time, even over Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth. Wagner, of course, was a great shortstop and a great hit ter. But Honus didn’t stop there. He was also a brilliant base runner. Carrying his 200 pounds, Wagner often stole more than 50 bases a year, which is one of the main rea sons for his selection by two such eminent baseball authocities. “I can’t recall even an attempted steal in the recent games between the Cardinals and the Browns. No one tried to bother the pitchers by even faking a steal. This gave each pitcher a chance to keep his full concentration on handling the bat tle. The answer was 92 strike-outs in six games for a new record. “I know the crowds like base run ning and base stealing. They get a thrill out of seeing some fast run ner take his whirl from first to sec ond. If he makes it he is only one hit away from a run. If he doesn’t try, he is two hits away from a run unless it happens to be a long blow, a double or a triple. But teams today are waiting for the one big punch, the one big inning. “That was alright when you had Ruth and Gehrig on one club. Bui not nowadays. Most of them now arc one and two-base hitters. Especiallj one-base hitters. These could drive in a lot more runs if that man on first would only get. to second. A lot of us used to get there. Why can’t they get there now? There is plenty in the way of speed today to pick up 35 or 50 stolen bases a year for any fairly fast man. “I know a great many thousands of fans feel about it just as I da The game has been throwing away one of its greatest arts.” THAT THIRTEEN-CENT STAMP Special delivery stamps jumped from a dime to thirteen cents No vember 1st. And you can’t even get two for a quarter. ♦ It is getting so that for what it costs to mail a letter a fellow can almost deliver it himself. • Why the increase in the price of special delivery stamps? Have they changed the size again? No. Are they turning it out in more colors or shapes? No. Do you get a chance on a turkey or something with it. Nopel • And why the thirteen cents? Why not fourteen? Or twelve? What is there about the economic situation that fixes the autumn rate for spe cials at exactly thirteen cents, no more, no less, retail and wholesale? • Elmer Twitchell has been making inquiries. He says he has been told that it is the art work on the stamp. It shows a nice brick building with a lady in a doorway taking a letter from a mailman. In the foreground stands his motorcycle. “The motor cycle has been standing there in that engraving so long it is all rusted up and they’ve got to get a new one,” said Elmer. “And that takes time, influence and money. Also it’s out of gas.” • “The old gal getting the letter is dressed in the garments of the Mc Kinley era,” he continued. “When people pay ten cents for a postage stamp they want something classy. Well, Washington is going to put a glamour girl in the doorway, and glamour girls are up 80 per cent since the war. « “If you look at the old stamp closely you will notice that the guy with the letter is standing with one foot on the street and one foot on the doorstep. He’s been standing that way for years, ever since away back before Coolidge. So what? So he’s got a stiff leg and they’ve got to treat it, and all the doctors are in the war so they’ve got to treat it through politicians. You know what that costs. • * “Then ybuTl observe that the lady In the doorway has the door almost wide open. And it’s been that way for decades. With the fuel situa tion what it is, Secretary Ickes wouldn’t stand for that. He or dered the door closed! • “Did you ever try to close a door on a postage stamp? It’s no cinch. It means a new house, a new door way, a new door, a new woman, a new mailman and a new motorcycle. • “You can’t change the house on ■ccount of priorities. A new door has to be processed. No new wom en are issued without fifty forms, questionnaires, applications, etc. A lot of mailmen were washed away in the last hurricane, and then there’s loss by erosion. And they ration motorcycles. ♦ “Thirteen cents for a new stamp! Why it’s dirt cheap,” concluded El mer. • • • THAT EXTRA PAIR OF PANTS WPB is reported about to modify the limitations on men’s suits. Since Pearl Harbor the extra pair of pants, the trouser cuffs, patch pock ets and belts have been against the rules. * Pants have gone to war, it has steadfastly held. • Only if you knew a bootlegger in the pants business could you get a spare pair. When the original pair disintegrat ed or got caught on a nail you could bring it in and argue the tailor into cutting another set, if he had the material, a good kindly nature and no fear of internment, as a scut- tler of the war effort. * Pants for victory! That was the slogan. With such others as “Spare the trousers and help win the war!” “Your pants can ruin Hitler,” "Be a one-pair-of-pants man and pre serve democracy!” and “Let your pants go all-out for civilization!” Be that as it may some modifi cation of WPB rules are ahead. It is reported unsold on the claim that a man is a more useful citizen with an extra pair of pants—that his mo rale is better—that a spart pair con stitutes the Fifth Freedom. • Then there was the slogan against belt-in-the-back-of-the-coat. “One less belt in the back will give Hitler 1 one more belt in the front.” * We got a laugh out of the state ment: “The clothing manufactur ers are against a return to an extra pair of pants.” Why wouldn’t they be? They sell suits more often when the consumer has no “reserves.” Belts? Let ’em go! Cuffs? Away with them until the global triumph comes! Vests with double-breasted coats? Who cares in an all-out warl iE^SCREEN£)tf0iO' Released by Western Newspaper Union. By VIRGINIA VALE R OBERT PAIGE has climbed to success in the movies the hard way; he made nineteen pio tures in two and one-half years, none of them strictly Grade A. But the break he finally got was worth that struggle — the role op posite Deanna Durbin in “Can’1 Help Singing,” a technicolor musi cal on which Universal spared nc expense. Bob’s an extremely likable young man whose greatest cross is ROBERT PAIGE the fact that because of stomach ulcers he was turned down flat for the armed forces. He’s doing a whale of a job, entertaining at camps and hospitals, but says he knows every man there is wonder ing why that big husky — he stands six feet two — isn’t in uniform. He would be if he could! * Years ago Henry Gladstone, Mu tual network commentator, in cluded among his boyish hobbies the two sports of harness racing and dog breeding. Now they’re paying dividends. Pathe News has an nounced that Gladstone will be the commentator for two new films, “Harness Racing” and “School for Dogs,” both of which are slated for national release this month. —*—- Gloria Dea, who plays a clown- dancer in Charles R. Roger’s “De lightfully Dangerous,” worked in the daytime; her fiance. Jack Statham, an orchestra leader, worked at night. And they wanted to get mar ried. But they couldn’t cope with the time problem. So Rogers held up the picture for 20 minutes re cently while the ceremony was per formed, with Connie Moore acting as official witness. * Hal Walker, assistant director at Paramount for 14 years, was made a director at the urgent request of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. His first picture is “Road to Utopica,” not yet released, said to be the best of all their “Road” pictures. Alan Ladd’s collecting signatures of movie stars, and he really works hard at it. When he started “Two Years Before the Mast” his little daughter Alana’s Irish nurse handed him her autograph book and firmly requested that he fill it for her. Good nurses are rare — so Ladd takes the book along whenever he goes anywhere where he’s likely to encounter movie celebrities, and the nurse is happy. * Bob Hope, star at Samuel Gold- wyn’s “The Princess and the Pi rate,” so far is the only representa tive of the show world to have his statue in “The Living Hall of Wash ington, 1944,” a collection of 50 statues of notable men in wartime in the Smithsonian institution. Sculptor Max Kalish posed him in what Hope calls “My ladies and gentlemen gesture” — with hands clasped. —*— You’ll see Fred MacMurray with a luminous face in “Murder, He Says,” a face insured by Para mount for $1,000,000. Studio techni cians figured out that they could coat Fred’s face with phosphorous mixed with grease paint, ignoring the fact that Peter Whitney was to hurl a blazing torch at the star, missing him—but possibly igniting the phosphorous. Executives got jittery—hence the insurance. The October Network Hooperat- ings are pretty interesting. “Wien a Girl Marries," by Elaine Carring ton, leads the list of the top 10 day time shows, with “Kate Smith Speaks” next, and “Our Gal, Sun day” in third place. “Stars Over Hollywood” leads Saturdays. The program having the most women listeners per set is “Songs by Mor ton Downey”; for the men it’s "Cedric Foster.” ODDS AND ENDS—Henry McNaugh ton, poem-reciting Englishman or. “It Pay! to Be Ignorant” has one ambition, to beat his wife at golf—she’s women’s Eastern champ. . . . Frank Farnum, Western star of silent films, makes his film comeback in Columbia’s “Tonight and Every Night,” Rita Hayworth picture; Farnum’s 19-year- old daughter, Gerry, makes her dancing debut in the same film. . . . Paulette God dard has had the same dressing room ever since she’s been at Paramount; other stars have changed with every increase in pay. . . . Claudette Colbert loves to de sign her own dresses—but her dressmaker refuses to follow Claudette’s designs. SEWING CIRCLE PATTERNS ‘Date’ Dress Is Slim, Graceful A Fashion 'Must.’ YX/’E KNOW what a “date” dress ” should have—and this one has everything! A close-fitting waist and peplum — a fashion “must” this year—and a softly gathered skirt to make you look slim and graceful. Pretty for fall and winter in velvets, velveteens, taffetas or rayon crepe. • • • Pattern No. S711 comes !n sizes 12, 14. 16, 18 and 20. Size 14, short sleeves, re quires 4!ii yards of 39-inch material; three-quarter sleeves, 4% yards. Due to an unusually large demand and current war conditions, slightly more time is required in filling orders for a few of the most popular pattern numbers. Send your order to: SEWING CIRCLE PATTERN DEPT. 530 South Wells St. Chicago Enclose 25 cents in coins for each pattern desired. Pattern No Size o oo*** Name j Address CHEST COLD neiTwtit .QUICKLY When chest muscles feel ‘‘tight’' and sore, RELIEVED due to a cold, rub on Mentholatum. Two vital actions bring quick relief: (1) Mentholatum stimulates surface circulation— helping to “loosen” the tight muscles. (2) Soothing mediclaal vapors comfort irritated mucous membranes of nose and throat. Get Mentholatum. Jars, tubas, 804. MENTHOLATUM —Bay War Savings Bonds— *★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ * America's favorite Cereal! * ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ CORN FLAKES wKKpom men “The Sralas are Orest Feeds”- • Kellogg’s Com Flakes bring you nearly all the protective food elements of the whole grain declared essential to human nutrition. 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