[Tiger Fan]

SEPTEMBER 4, 1950

FIGHTING SAINTS TOP PRESEASON GRID POLL

The St. Blane Fighting Saints are no strangers to the top of the college football rankings but the Saints, absent from the number one spot when it matters most each of the past two years, will begin a new decade as the number one ranked team in collegiate football. The Latrobe, Pa. football power was unbeaten in both 1946 and 1947 to top the final rankings, released each December but both last season and in 1948 the Fighting Saints found themselves serving as bridesmaids with back to back second place finishes.

This year the pundits that cast their votes weekly from mid-October until mid-December are putting St Blane first, and expecting a big season from quarterback Bill Thomas, who was an All-American as a junior for the Saints a year ago. St Blane is closely followed in the early rankings by another two-time champion the past decade in the Rome State Centurions. The military academy no longer enjoys the pick of the litter, as it did during the war years, but Rome State has finished in the top ten each of the past two years including an 8-0-1 finish a year ago that earned them the number four slot in the final poll.

Detroit City College, which went a perfect 9-0 and won the National Title in 1948 after finishing second to the Saints despite a perfect season the year prior, stumbled through a dismal, by their standards, 5-4 season but the pollsters feel the Knights will once more be a team to fear when the 1950 grid campaign kicks off in less than two weeks.

Sitting in the number four seat are Deep South power Cumberland as the Tennessee school is coming off a 7-2-2 campaign that culminated in a decisive New Year's Day Classic win over Iowa State in the first-ever Ozark Classic. Southwestern Alliance champion Travis College, which capped it's 10-1 season with a 16-10 win over Minnesota Tech in last year's Oilman Classic is fifth while defending National Champion Oklahoma City State, which was a perfect 11-0 and blasted Bayou State 24-7 in the Lone Star Classic is sixth in the preseason rankings.

OPENING WEEKEND SCHEDULE
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 15
Charleston (IL) at Bulein

SAUTRDAY SETPEMBER 16
Texas Panhandle at Queen City
Mile High State at Lambert College
Abilene Baptist at El Paso Methodist
Baldwin City College at Eastern Kansas
McKinney State at Central Kentucky
Everman State (TX) at Payne State
Kit Carson University at Cache Valley
Flagstaff State at Canyon A&M
Western Montana at Wyoming A&I

WHO WANTS IT? CA FLAG RACE WIDE-OPEN

Saints, Cannons, Stars All Struggling

The Continental Association pennant race gets more confusing by the day. A week ago, both the Chicago Cougars and Brooklyn Kings seemed to be fading and we appeared to be down to a three team slugfest for the flag over the final month of the season. But now, after big weekends from both against teams ahead of them in the standings, a mere four and a half game separate the top five clubs in the loop with just 4 weeks remaining in the campaign.

The Saints are still first, clinging to a half game lead on Cincinnati after suffering through a 6-game losing skid before finally salvaging the finale of their three game weekend set with the Chicago Cougars - who suddenly seem inspired again after taking 3 of 5 from the top two teams in the loop last week. It is the club that the Cougars are now tied with at 4.5 games off the pace that is the hottest team of late. That would be the up and down Brooklyn Kings who completed 3 game sweeps of both Cincinnati and the New York Stars over the past 10 days but sandwiched those sweeps around a pair of dreadful mound performances in dropping two games in Cleveland.

Any given week it is different teams that either appear on the rise or struggling. The Saints have managed to hang on to top spot but since the loss of lead-off man Joe Austin the Montrealer's have dropped 8 of their last 12 games and appear to be just barely hanging on. The Cannons were swept by Brooklyn a week and a half ago, derailing their progress, and went 3-3 over the past 8 days with splits against the Stars, Cougars and Foresters.

The Stars have been up and down all season and may well be in first place by the time today comes to an end as they host Montreal in a double-header today before finishing the week with 2 game sets against the Cougars and Kings. The Kings are a bad word at Dyckman Stadium right now after Brooklyn ruined the Stars weekend with a 3-game sweep to keep New York in third place.

Here is how it sits right now, with the Saints -who will play 18 of their final 24 games at Parc Cartier- still the favourites, The second place Cannons are saddled with a tough final month as the schedule-maker has the Queen City nine on the road for 21 of its final 27 contests. Like Montreal, the New York Stars have plenty of home games as 15 of their last 21 will be at Dyckman Stadium. It promises to be an interesting final four weeks in the Continental Association.

It was a strange week in the Montreal clubhouse. First an awful week with 1-4 sim. Probably not the best time to get this record in the middle of a tight pennant race that has the Saints clinging to a mere half-game lead on the Cincinnati Cannons with three other teams well within shouting distance.

The injury bug also bit again as the latest casualty is third baseman Luke Weaver, who is lost for the rest of the year after suffering an ankle injury in a loss to the Chicago Cougars on Saturday. Weaver joins 1949 Kellogg Award winner Joe Austin on the sidelines as the Saints embark on their most crucial month in decades, hoping to end a three decade long pennant drought.

The absence of Austin's speed is clearly showing, losing the leadoff hitter is reducing the number of runs produced by the team and they have struggled to win games as a result. The Saints are just 4-8 since the speedy second sacker was hurt and have scored 2 runs or less in five of those losses.

Now with Weaver, who was batting .290 with 8 homers and 45 rbi's, out as well it looks like veteran Jake Hughes will be asked to take over at the hot corner. The 34-year-old is a career .280 hitter but has been anything but hot this season, struggling with a .196 batting average in a reduced role. Saints skipper Jim Cator is said to be toying with the idea of using first baseman Hank Smith at third, but that is a position the 26-year-old slugger has never played so if the move is made it will certainly be a big gamble as Cator has to hope Smith's offensive production (.257,7,20 in 105 at bats) will be enough to offset what could be a real adventure for the 26-year-old in the field.

The pitching rotation is doing a solid job led by Bert Cupid, who was named CA pitcher of the month in August with 5-1 record and 1.55 ERA. When your starters are giving 3 runs or less per start and still losing 4 games out of 5, it certainly means something is going wrong on offense, which emphasizes just how much the table-setting skills of lead-off man Joe Austin have been missed.

How solid has the pitching been? The table below show the best 4 performances of the week in pitching, but only Wally Reif got the win as the offense scored 8 runs in that game. The offense got cold in the other 4 games with only 1 run per game in 3 of those. Fans are hoping the offense will wake up in the next week to stay in the pennant race. Summary of the week, Saint lead is now 0.5 game ahead of Cincinnati and a game and a half up on the New York Stars with a big double-header set for New York's Dyckman Stadium today.

Saturday afternoon at Gothams Stadium was a historic day in what has become a historic season for the New York Gothams. Closing in on a pennant that finally exorcises the ghosts that have haunted this franchise on the mound the past half a dozen years, the attention was focused squarely on one of the big bats in a loaded lineup on this day.

That would be Red Johnson as the 32-year-old smacked his 27th homerun of the season in a 7-4 victory over the Chicago Chiefs, but more importantly it was the 400th round-tripper of Johnson's illustrious career. He is now in pretty select company as only Hall of Famers Max Morris, Al Wheeler and Rankin Kellogg along with certain Hall of Famer to-be in Bobby Barrell have scaled such lofty heights. Johnson, who will turn 33 on the day the Gothams close out the regular season against his former club, the Detroit Dynamos, should still have plenty of longballs left in his bat and it is likely a good bet that by the time the 4-time Whitney Award winner is ready to hang up his cleats only Morris and Barrell will have hit more homeruns than the Gothams #4, Big Timber Red Johnson.

Drafted second overall in 1935 by the Detroit Dynamos -he followed a pretty good pitcher by the name of Deuce Barrell who went #1 to the old Baltimore Cannons that draft- Johnson made his big league debut with the Dynamos as a 19-year-old in 1937. His first homerun came in his third big league game, but once more a Barrell overshadowed him. That was September 15, 1937, and the big story was Bobby Barrell blasted a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the ninth to give the Keystones a 9-6 win over the Dynamos. Interesting to note is that Rankin Kellogg, another member of the exclusive 400 homer club, also went deep that day. Like Barrell's big blast that Wednesday afternoon, Johnson's first career homer also made a big splash as it, too, was a grand slam. Red's came in the opening inning off a pitcher who would eventually be his teammate in Detroit, an Allan Award winner as well, by the name of Frank Crawford.

Interesting how the circle of baseball is as Crawford would be traded to Detroit for another player who seems destined to become the sixth member of the 400 homerun club. That would be Hank Koblenz, who like Johnson got his start in the Detroit system and was dispatched to the Keystones for Crawford and Frank LeMieux in 1938.

TALES FROM THE LAIR

Toronto Enters Last Month of Season - The Wolves closed out August with a record of 12-17. As bad as that sounds it was their best winning percentage, .417, since a 5-3 record way back in April. it follows July's 5-22 mark when the team decided to head in a new direction.

A losing record is still not good, but fans must take heart in the improvement of 7 wins in August. The team had a chance to have a winning homestand after a 2-1 win, in a 13 inning marathon, over the Cougars on Monday before losing two to the Stars, 7-0 then 9-4 to finish 6-8 during the two weeks at home. The Wolves split in Philly, the win being a 3-0 complete game shutout by 37-year-old Joe Hancock after an another one-run loss on Saturday.

Looking ahead, Cleveland will host the traditional Labour Day doubleheader today before the team returns home for a quick 6 day, 6 games set that begins with 3 against the Cannons, who are only a half game back of first place Montreal. Then it will be a weekend series hosting the Sailors for Toronto.

Fred Barrell has stated the goal of the team, aside from establishing a hierarchy for 1951 spring training, is to make things difficult for any contender "We will not be a walkover for any team, the players still have their pride. It has been difficult season, regardless we will play to win each and every game. We are improving each and every day."

Kirby Copeland should be getting serious consideration for Rookie of the Year in the CA. He is now third in the league hitting at .327 and reaching base at .380 rate. He also had a league high hitting streak of 21 games recently broken at home. Copeland is one of success stories in an otherwise dismal season. the new infield of Finney, Wells, DeMott seems to be making progress defensively which is key going forward. All three can hit, their lines for August were: Wells .400/.431/.527, Finney .327/.388/.413, DeMott .314/.354/.397. Rumours of Fred McCormick's demise seem to be premature after an August of .314/.404/.904 with 10 XBH 12 RBI including 2 triples for the old man. No speedster McCormick surprisingly has 177 career three baggers. Will he stay around for another year to provide sage advice to the youngsters?

The Wolves have the nucleus of a good, young, hitting team albeit lacking power. Over the winter the team has to find pitching, it has been awful all season. Wolves have a long way to go, there are encouraging signs. Next year's focus should be getting back to the first division in the CA.

• Red Johnson's 400th career homerun was not the only milestone reached last week. Both Bill Barrett of the New York Stars and Cincinnati's Chuck Adams each notched their 1,500th career big league hit.
• The Dynamos need some vitamins for the final few months of the season it appears. The Detroit ballclub sure seems to wear down. Since August 5 this season they are 8-20. This marks the third time in the past four years the Dynamos have had an awful collapse the stretch. In 1948 they imploded with a 22-35 stretch run and in 1947 they finished up with a 21-32 run. Even last year, while not as bad, it was only moderately better and Detroit still lost more than it won down the stretch, going 22-23 over their final 45 games to fall out of pennant contention.
• It had looked like he would easily set the home run record for catchers, but Pete Casstevens of the Chicago Chiefs has hit the proverbial catcher's wall at the end of the season. Since August 1st, he is batting .163 with an OPS of .655 (70 wRC+). And he's homered just twice since August 11th.

RECENT KEY RESULTS

• A busy week with some key fights on each coast begins in California Wednesday evening where Davis Owens, the pride of Cleveland, OH., scored a unanimous decision over Brooks O'Connor in a 10-round middleweight tilt. Owens, who is ranked as the top contender for the middleweight title held by John Edmonds, improved to a glittery 23-1 as a professional. O'Connor, now 33, was once a force in the division but never did get a shot at the crown, and his once promising career is now very much on the downside.
• Mac Erickson, trying to work his way back in to welterweight title contention and regaining a belt he held for nearly two years, snapped his two fight losing streak Thursday at Bigsby Garden with an impressive showing in outpointing Alonso Salazar. Erickson was 22-0 until Mark Westlake upset him to win the ABF World Tittle and then he stumbled in his return to the ring, losing a decision to Ben Bishop in June.
• Also on Thursday in Galveston, Tx. middleweight Nick Harris stumbled, losing a majority decision to Andrew Hammon, an underrated fighter out of San Jose, California.
• Friday night at Brooklyn's Flatbush Garden, hometown hero Bill Boggs stepped back into the ring in his first fight since losing his chance at the vacant middleweight title when he fell to John Edmonds. Boggs had taken nearly six months away from the ring and looked very impressive in prevailing against young Mark McCoy, the Kansas City Kid, who had previously suffered just one loss in his ring career, in a 10-rounder that kept the fans on their feet in a battle that was very close.
• Saturday night the focus was split between New York and Boston. At the Garden, Ira Mitchell knocked out British welterweight sensation Danny Julian in the fifth round of the tussle between contenders for the division title. Mitchell, the 30-year-old Chicago-born pugilist who had a title shot against Harold Stephens a couple of years ago and also counts tough losses to Mark Westlake and Danny Rutledge, adds Julian to his list of victims that also include the likes of Carl Taylor, Willis May and George Gibbs. Mitchell is 26-5 while Julian, who crossed the Atlantic in search of a world title shot, drops to 29-2-1 and sees his championship aspirations badly wounded. Meanwhile at Denny Arena in Boston, the other big British import had a rough evening as well. Ben Budgeford, who crossed the pond to face, and of course lose, to Hector Sawyer in February, found himself an early victim of Gil Hillard after the the veteran West Coast fighter overwhelmed the Brit in the opening round and needed just over two minutes of ring time to turn Budgeford's right eye into a bloody mess and left referee Vic Green no choice but to halt the proceedings and award Hillard, who is now 31-11-2, a first round TKO victory. It was not the shortest fight of Hillard's career as back in 1940 when he was just starting out he needed just 1:46 to knock out Tony Fowler.

UPCOMING MAJOR FIGHTS

• Sep 5- Keystone Arena, Philadelphia: veteran welterweights Scott Sorensen (27-13-3) and Rudy Perry (28-6-1) meet.
• Sep 8 - Thompson Palladium, Detroit: a pair of rising Motor City heavyweights clash with Joey Tierney (19-0) facing Bill Sloan (19-2)
• Sep 12- Buffalo, NY: Canadian middleweight Kevin Rawlings (25-5) faces veteran Philadelphia fighter John Baker (26-7-1)
• Sep 14- Bigsby Garden, New York: heavyweight Lewis Jones (22-3-1) vs Larry Higgins (27-8-4)
• Sep 22 - Cincinnati, OH.: former welterweight champion Mark Westlake (28-6-1) faces contender Danny Rutledge (20-1-1)
• Sep 22 - Pittsburgh, PA: Italian middelweight Hugo Canio (17-1-2) vs Bobby Hinkle (30-9)
• Sep 22- Baltimore, MD: rising heavyweights John Jones (18-0-1) vs Brad Harris (18-0-1)
• Sep 29, 1950- Bigsby Garden, New York - World Middleweight title John Edmonds (32-3) faces formerly retired former champ Frank 'The Tank' Melanson (33-3-2)

The Week That Was
Current events from the week ending 9/03/1950

• President Truman ordered Gen. MacArthur to withdraw a statement he made on American policy in Formosa in order "to avoid confusion as to the United States position." MacArthur had said that Formosa, now serving as the seat of government of the Chinese Nationalists, must remain in friendly hands or if occupied by communists it would make war inevitable.
• At home, Senator Taft, Republican of Ohio, demanded that the Truman administration clear up what he termed "a complete lack of both plans and policy" to meet the threat of a third world war. Taft also suggested rearming Western Germans and Italians to help defend Western Europe from possible Russian attack.
• Allied troops beat back Red attacks in two wild battles at opposite ends of the curving Korean waterfront this week.
  
  
• Leaflets dropped all over Korea by Allied planes telling its citizens that their Communist rulers would be ousted once the United Nations forces fight their way back to the 38th parallel. The leaflets also advised civilians to move away from cities which have been converted into military targets by "your Communist leaders" and told them "You can help build a strong, free Korea after the Communists have been driven out."
• The Senate Armed Services Committee announced it has postponed action on universal military training until January.
• The President has asked for $6 million to expand the FBI to meet the needs of the Korean war. The money will be used to increase the number of agents working for the Bureau.
• At week's end it was revealed the United States is po ised to announce a substantial increase of its ground forces in Western Europe.
• Congress quickly pledged support following the President's call for doubling American fighting forces to nearly 3 million men in order to meet the threat of Communist aggression in the world today.