The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-07-07
Corbett's Daily Letter
 On Great Sport Topics
By JAMES J. coRBETr.

the satellites have been heavy men; base ball warriors who beamed from to 25 pounds beyond the normal weight for their build.
 Ed Delehanty, Cap" Anson. Buck Freeman. Bill Lange, Dan Brouthers. Rig CT Conner, Ed Williamson, Jesse Burxett and the other clouting marvels of tha bygone day all were heavy men. Each packed more weight on his frame than | the standard calls for, yet that very fact never interfered with their wizardry with | the mace.
 i Hans Wagner. undoubtedly the might. fest swatsmith the National league has produced in the past 20 years, tipped the scales around 190 during the heyday Of his career, although the normal weight l for man of his height was somewhere | in the neighborhood of 175 And his great rival in the American league-Na- poleon Lajoie-also was a heavy man.
 The Frenchman carried about 1S5 pounds | in the days of his greatest glory. yet
 the excess bulk never interfered with his
 clouting skill nor did it affect his marvel
 ous fielding ability.
 | Iris Speaker is a portly athlete, yet
 he ranks as one of the greatest-is not the greatest-all-round center fiefds CTS that ever lived. A terrible hitter.
 whirlwind on the bases, and able to | cover acres of territory In the outfeld. Speaker, although overweight. ever will
 be chased as wonder of baseball won | ders.
 l Cactus" Cravath, the Home RulA
 King of the majors. wasn't much of
 a swatter when he got a big league try out in 1911 And, in those days ''Cactus''
 was a rather slender person. He went to
 the minors, fattened up 40 pounds and
 came back to maui the pitchers for ths greates number of circuit swats any | player ever has annexed.
 | Frank Baker, Jake Daubert, Fred 1 Merllle. Babe Ruth, George Sisler-an are heavy men. But look at where thex ', are in the standing of swatsmithsl Ben. ny kaufrs height called for about .1H | pounds-yet Benny .toted around l7a
 without dimming his baseball brillancr, | George Burns of the Giants. regarded as
 the greatest outfielder in the Tener cir 1 cult, should weigh about 40 pounds, He actually weighs about 165. But foi several years he has been one of ths l fleetest outfielders. one of the greatest baserunners and on of the most consist- ent htters in baseball.
 ny Cobb was skinny kid when he ann lbled into major league view in 1905. AS , Ty began to add weight to his frame ht ! began to add to his swatting averase and to his compilation of stolen base The buliier Ty became the greater | seemed to be. In 1915 ny was overweight as far as the standard Is concerned, yT in that year he scored IA runs, hit fos 370 and stole 9S bases-the greatest retl ord established by any player in nor than 20 years. Eddie Collins and Willie keeler art about the only two athletes who starred lconsistently with the mace who remainef about normal in their weight--or. 3 times actually were underweight. Bu Il Keeler wasn't actually a terrible hitter He depended on his great speed and hi
 uncanny ability to place drives to over come the handicap of lack of weight
 And it's the speed of Collins which en
 ables him to eeat out infield drives ant
 thus keep apace the great batters of tn
 day.
 So it seems that the advice for tn
 youngster who aspires to become a grea
 batsman is: II "Eatten up!'