Sunday 6 January 2008

Tuesday, June 3, 1952

W L Pct. GB
Victoria ..... 27 12 .692 —
Spokane ...... 26 17 .605 3
Vancouver .... 19 17 .528 6½
Lewiston ..... 22 21 .512 7
Salem ........ 21 23 .477 7½
Tri-City ..... 19 25 .432 10½
Wenatchee .... 18 25 .419 11
Yakima ....... 16 28 .364 13½


SALEM, June 3—Salem edged Wenatchee 2-1 in the opening game of a Western International League baseball series nere Tuesday night.
Catcher Walt Pocekey's homer in the third accounted for Wenatchee's only run at Salem. The Senators scored their two in the second on a single by Jim Deyo and doubles by Tom Galli and pitcher Ray McNulty.
Wenatchee ...... 001 000 000—1 9 3
Salem ............. 020 000 00x—2 7 1
Oubre and Pocekay; McNulty and Nelson.

KENNEWICK, [Herald, June 4]—In the cellar less than a week ago, the Tri-City Braves today weare in sixth place inthe Westrn International League baseball race. Back of that sudden — but long awaited jump — is a string of four-consecutive victories, and even in their last, nine starts.
Last night the Braves made it four in a row when they edged past Yakima 11-10 in a 3-hour, 10-minute marathon filled with base hits, two critical Yakima errors and some sloppy playing.
George New, the fourth Tri-City hurler in the 10-inning affair got credit for the win. Bob Rittenberg delivered it with his only hit of the game, a little blooper that dropped over thfe pulled-in Yakima infield, to score Don Lopes from third.
Ralph Romero, who was tabbed to hurl last night's game wasn't able to pitch because of a sudden attack of the flu. However, Manager Charlie Gassaway said his right handed ace definitely will start tonight. Dario Lodigiani, Yakima's pilot is sending Jack Thompson out for the Bears.
There was a home run, two triples and four doubles wrapped in the 24-hit affair last night. Lopes got the circuit smash when he poled out Shandor's offering in the sixth. Des Charouhas and Joe Scalise got the hard-to-get triples. Charouhas' drive found one runner on base while Scalise sent two across the plate.
Bob Greenwood, a 6-foot, 4-inch righthander started for Tri-City, but tired rapidly and was lifted at the end of the fourth. "Fireman" Ken Michelson took over with what looked like a safe 6-2 bulge but it melted like snow in the sun before a five-hit
barrage of the Bears. Dick Waibel who then took over found the going just at rough and he was quickly replaced by New. New throttled Yakima except for the lone run, he gave up in the ninth that tied the score. Then Rittenberg untied it in the tenth to win the game.
In Yakima's sixth when they shelled Tri-City's trio of hurlers they scored seven times on seven runs.
If Shandor wanted to look around for a "goat" he might glance in the general direction of outfielder Jerry Zuvela. Zuvela dropped an easy fly ball that let in two Tri-City runs in the second inning and also got picked off first in the fourth. His failure to be aware of what was going on then cost the Bears another run as he might have scored either on Donahue's single, or certainly on the three subsequent free passes doled out by Greenwood.
Yakima ......... 000 207 001 0—10 13 2
Tri-City ......... 240 001 300 1—11 11 0
Shandor and Donahue, Myers (9); Greenwood, Michelson (6), Waibel (6), New (8) and Carr, Pesut (8).

Spokane at Victoria, postponed, rain.
Lewiston at Vancouver, postponed, rain.

Stites Suspended
YAKIMA [TSN] Following a warning by Manager Dario Lodigiani that another training rule infraction would result in an indefinite suspension, pitcher Bill Stites of Yakima was removed from the active roster today. The hurler, who won 29 games for El Paso (West Texas-New Mexico) last year, failed to rejoin his mates on schedule after visiting relatives in Sandpoint, Idaho, during an off-day.

The Sport Herald
KEITH MATTHEWS
On Baseball’s Forgotten Men
Who, in your opinion, is the most important individual on a baseball field?
One man will tell you it’s the pitcher, another the clean-up hitter with TNT in his bat. However, ask the players themselves, and they’ll all point to the press box and say, “the official scorer.”
This gentlemen determined the difference between a base-hit and an error, the winning and losing pitcher and what constitutes an earned run. In every way, he is the ball players’ bread and butter.
We have made “official scoring” sound like a pretty important job. And it is. It is a highly scientific chore which is not picked up overnight.
For instance—score this teaser, if you are of the opinion that the job is for the humpty-dumpties:
There is one out, a runner on third base and two strikes on the batter. The runner breaks for the plate and arrives simultaneously with the ball. The ball, incidentally, crosses the plate in the batter’s strike zone, but there is no tag play on the runner.
Easy? We doubt if a handful of fans in all Vancouver could give a correct interpretation without first consulting a rule book.
However, for your information, the batter would be called out on strikes and the run allowed. The situation only differs when, under identical circumstances, but with two out, the run would be disallowed.
Baseball clubs, particularly those in the low minors, run into an annual headache in the selection of scorekeepers, because of the ‘inside’ knowledge required of the job. In the past sports writers have been used almost exclusively.
Some Decisions Are Left-Handed
Once, a few years ago, Ty Cobb started a movement to utilize “old-time” ball players on the job, for in the big leagues, the reimbursement is $1500 per season and up. It didn’t work, because nine out of every ten ball players can do little more than scratch the surface of the scoring rules.
Locally, the Capilanos are pretty lucky in that Bob Brown has been able to find both intelligence and better-than-average knowledge in his baseball writers and exploit same into the job of scorekeeping.
Elsewhere, the Western International League isn’t so fortunate. In the smaller towns—i.e., Lewiston, Tri-City and Wenatchee—some of the scoring decisions are atrocious. Bill Schuster cited a succession of plays for men which happened on a recent Vancouver visit to one of the above towns.
“A pop fly went into short right field, about 20 feet behind first base,” Bill explained. “Wert circled back, caught the ball cleanly, then dropped it. On the next play, Jesse Williams picked up a slow roller but his throw to first was 10 feet over Wert’s head. Jim chased the ball and his relay to third went into the dugout. The scorer didn’t charge an error in the entire inning and, as a result, Paul Jones’ (the pitcher) earned run average at the end of the year will not be a true indication of his effectiveness.
We ran into one, ourselves, a little while ago. It was during a Vancouver road trip, and we were in our office getting a play-by-play from the official scorer at the ball game.
This wasn’t an error in judgment on a scoring play but, even worse, it showed a complete lack of knowledge of a game in which this man was supposed to be an important official.
To start with, the scorer sent along the batting orders and did the job almost perfectly. Excepting, in naming the opposing pitcher, he forgot to indicate whether the gentleman threw his balls right or left-handed.
One Went On To Better Things
We queried for clarification of the problem as, in this case, the pitcher was a newcomer to the league and might have served with baseballs with applesauce for all we know.
The first time there was no answer. We tried again. No luck. Luck always comes in threes, and we queries once more. Again, no answer—but on the fourth try, and this time we tried a dash of sarcasm to emphasize our needs, we least got our reply. It came as follows:
“Right or left-handed? I couldn’t say, I don’t remember.”
As long as baseball lives, there will be pros and cons about official scores, just the same as there is about umpires or the ability of a ball player to go to his right or left. It just happens on every close play, you score a basehit at the expense of the pitcher, on an error at the expense of the fielder. Somebody is always going to be sore at you.
Only once in our memory, though, was an official scorer’s decision changed by a “higher-up.”
It happened long, long ago in the American League, on the final day of the season in Comiskey Park, Chicago. The Detroit Tigers, and Ty Cobb, were in town and Cobb had a .395 batting average working for him.
That day, Ty went four-for-six and his average jumped to .399. One of the two times he was put out was on a slow roller to the third baseman, which the latter bobbled. The official scorer, Arch Ward of the Chicago Tribune, called it an error.
Cobb protested the decision to the American League president, Ban Johnson, indicated he would have beaten the throw to first even had it been handled perfectly. Johnson upheld the protest and that is how Cobb became one of the immortal “400”—with an average of .401.
Ward, of course, still felt he was correct. He quit his position, as a scorer, in a huff, and went on to promote a scheme for his paper which he called the “Golden Gloves.” Boxing at least, benefited from Mr. Ward’s fury.

WILfan note: Keith's being a bit disingenuous in his first example. He's talking about official scoring, but it's not scorer's call whether the run counts. About all the scorer can do is credit a stolen base to the runner or a passed ball to the catcher (only he catcher mishandles the ball) in determining how the run scored. As for Schuster's examples, it hard to tell because we don't know how Wert played the ball, if the runner would have beaten Williams' throw had it been good, or if any runners advanced on Wert's throw (though, presumably, they did).

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