The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-06-05
Gehrig's Bat Made
 Him One of Games Great First Basemen

New York, June 6-A New York doctor, after examining the late Lou 0ehrig, thought he detected . murmur, put him on the sidelines, as 1t turned out there never was anything wrong with the Gehrig heart. Not in any sense. It was Q warm heart, a big,strong heart and a fiery competitive heart
 The Gehrig record as big leaguer Is practically on open book. Even the kids in the street know 1t by heart. Whether posterity will accept him as the supreme first baseman of all time remains to be seen. If you take him just as e hitter he undoubtedly was. Hank Greenberg might have come along In later years to make 1t close but that's just Q guess. The Gehrig fig ures offer a difficult goal He aver. aged .340 as a regular season per- former and .36l as world series competitor. Twice In e world series he hit better than 800. He was e tough cookie when the chips were down.
 There have been better fielders and better ground eoverers at first than Gehrig was but he stood alone when 1t came to hitting the vital long ball and hitting 1t often, One of his records offers eloquent tes. timony to this fact. He cleaned the bases twenty-three times with home runs. This shows how lethal he was in the clutches. Together with the fabulous Babe he formed tho most destructive one-two punch baseball over knew, the only consistent combination capable of driving In five runs with two swings, one fol- lowing the other.
 Chase Was Great
 The list of Standout first base. men isn't long. It always starts out with Hal Chase. From there It goes to George Sisler and Bill Terry and Lou Gehrig, with incidental votes for Stuffy McInniS, Babe, Dahl- gren. Jimmy Foxx and Hank Greenberg. For some reason the name of Jake Daubert is seldom mentioned. It should be. He was Q 300 hitter and could make all the plays. Chase Is the only one listed we never saw In action, but all the old timers put him on top. They say he could do more with Q base- bal lthan 0 monkey can with Q cocoanut. He was ideal for the type of game in vogue in those days; hit and running and drag bunting, soft stuff with finesse. Whether he would have fitted into the present day pattern where the accent Is on power Is hard to say. The possi- bility is he would have been no more conspicuous than Babe Dahlgren or a Joe Kuhel. Your modern first baseman must be hitter above everything else. Few teams can afford the luxury of light hitter at this position. The stylish fielder who lacks power Is definite handicap. AS Rogers Hornsby once said to us: You can shake them fancy Dams down out of trees"
 The best all around first base man we ever saw was Sisler. He was faster and more agile than Gehrig and that made him a better field CT. He didn't hit the long ball that Gehrig did, not as often, that is, but he was a splendid hitter just the same. We are vague as to the precise details but we seem to re- call he set some sort of a record for hitting triples. We once saw him drive in seven runs in two suc- cessive trips to the plate; he clean ed the bases with a triple and the next time up he cleaned them again with a home run. Thus at times he was capable of performances which would have done even the Gehrigs and the Ruths proud.
 Cobb, Sisler Tied
 One season Sisler led the Ameri-