College Baseball

College baseball is 80 years old and so feeble that it has to be supported by colege football, ten years its junior. Once considered attractive enough to lure crowds of 15,000 to 20,000, college base-)all now attracts only 3,000 or 4,000 specators to its big games. Why this hoary U. S. sport has been snubbed by undergraduates and alumni, no two college men gree. But baseball experts have not ignored college baseball. In its rosters major-league scouts have found many a man for their clubs' lineups.

Scouts for the scouts are college baseball coaches. Some coaches are on the payroll of big-league clubs, some get commissions when players they recommend are signed up. Because their salaries are small (about one-sixth that of college football coaches) the practice of scouting is a welcome perquisite for baseball coaches, keeps many of them at a job hey otherwise might quit.

Last week, as college baseball reached the homestretch of its 80th season, major-league scouts reviewed the year's outstanding players. No. 1 pitcher of the season has been Fordham's Hank Borowy, son of a New Jersey hat manufacturer, who has been defeated only once in 13 starts--and is Fordham's best batter to boot. Against Yale last week Right-hander Borowy performed in routine fashion: he struck out ten men, allowed only four hits, shut out his opponents 5-to-0 for Fordham's 16th victory of the season. In three years at Fordham (against Grade A competition) Junior Borowy has chalked up 27 victories in 28 starts--a record that looked pretty good to the World Champion New York Yankees with whom he is reputed to have signed (with a bonus of $10,000 for signing).

Another college baseballer who has had big-league scouts tripping over one another in the stands is Duke's Leftfielder Eric Tipton, more famed as the punting halfback who almost singlehanded defeated Pitt's famed football team last fall. In three years of varsity baseball, Titan Tipton has batted .446, .407, .410. Tipton, however, is not Duke's only slugger. This year's team has six .400 batters. So far this season they have won 21 of their 22 games, have averaged n.i runs and 13.2 hits a game--a record even more extraordinary than Duke's undefeated, untied, unscored-on football team of 1938.*

Among scores of other college baseballers singled out this year as big-league timber, there are a half-dozen far more famed (though less skilful) than either Borowy or Tipton. In the Yale line-up two of the most noteworthy players are Outfielder Eddie Collins Jr., son of the Baseball Immortal who helped bring fame to Connie Mack's pre-War Athletics, and Pitcher Joe Wood Jr., son of famed "Smoky Joe"* who won 34 games for the Red Sox in 1912. At Colgate another Immortal's son, Pitcher George Sisler Jr., has proved he is a chip off the old bat. At the

University of Maryland, scouts have had their eyes on a crack shortstop, Eddie Johnson, son of the Immortal "Big Train."

* In college baseball, undefeated seasons are rare because teams seldom have more than one good pitcher on their rosters.

*Yale baseball coach for the past 17 years,

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