Games of Sunday, June 29, 1947

WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE
Standings on Monday morning, June 30
. . . . . . . .Win Loss PCT. GB
Bremerton .... 43 30 .589 --
Salem ........ 40 31 .563 2
Spokane ...... 40 32 .556 2½
Tacoma ....... 38 34 .528 4½
Victoria ..... 35 34 .507 6
Vancouver .... 38 37 .507 6
Yakima ....... 29 41 .414 12½
Wenatchee .... 24 48 .333 18½

First Game
Wenatchee ...... 101 010 100 - 4 14 2
Tacoma ........... 100 001 21x - 5 13 2
Cronin and Winter; Walden and Kuper.
Second Game
Wenatchee ........ 000 010 0 - 1 6 1
Tacoma ............. 040 000 00x - 4 7 1
Condon, Rose (6) and Winter; Tinsley and Kuper.

First Game
Spokane ........... 140 010 002 - 8 11 2
Bremerton ....... 200 052 02x - 11 9 0
Samson, Forsyth (5) and Bufflap; Marshall, Johnston (2) and Volpi.
Second Game
Spokane ........... 010 000 0 - 1 6 2
Bremerton ...... 230 021 x - 8 10 1
Latino and O'Neill; Sullivan and Ronning .

Only games played

ON THE RUN
Sagging Tigers
Unless Manager Red Harvell can pull a rabbit out of a hat, his Tacoma Tigers won't go anywhere except down in the Western International League race. They may still have visions of grabbing the pennant, but a more immediate goal is a .500 average and the first division.
Come to think of it, that rabbit wouldn't do Harvell any good unless the bunny could pitch. With five regulars over the .300 mark in batting, the Tiger attack is living up to spring expectations, but hurlers haven't got it.
As of last Sunday, Earl Kuper, Tiger catcher, was swinging at a .395 clip. Glen Stetter, last year's batting king, had .344; Dick Greco, the home run specialist, .337, Hedington, who wasn't here for the training camp, is hitting .310, and Tedeschi has a .309 average.
A curious feature of the league averages is that the catchers are holding the first three spots. Mastro of Vancouver [sic] leads with .409, with Kuper following and Volpi, Bremerton backstop, in third with .359. Also note that Ed Fitzgerald, Sacramento's rookie catcher, leads the P. C. L. with .355. He was at Wenatchee in 1946.
Chain Gang Gripes
The big beef now being noised in Spokane is that Brooklyn is building up its Class C Santa Barbara club at the expense of the Indians.
That is a very sad story. Although the Indians are leading the league as this is written, and promise to make a fight all the way, it is still a melancholy narrative. After all, with the right players they might win the penant by 50 games.
And we'll toss the complaint on this pile over here, which is two feet high and includes nothing but sob yarns from farm team towns, telling how some big league club isn't doing right by Our Boys.
There have been complaints about the farm system ever since Branch Rickey started the Cardinals in the business of growing diamond stars like corn-fed cattle.
Since then, one of the major duties of the major league commissioner has been to see that the farms are operated with a semblance of ethics, and a large portion of Judge Landis' fame rests on those emancipation proclamations which freed hundreds of ball players.
The matter of playing favorites in a chain is only one of many sides to the question of the farm system's value. Good or bad, however, it is a fact of life, like the atomic bomb, and professional baseball is struck with it.
A cross-indexed record of how much each team in each chain finished would be an interesting document. Lacking both the information and the energy to compile such a record, the scribe passes on a couple of guesses about what you would find in it.
Guess No. 1: The teams which are owned by another fare better than those which have working agreements, because the owner is more interested in the gate receipts.
Guess No. 2: The most promising players go to the most trusted manager, who can be counted on to ready the youngsters the most and won't be tempted to burn out a young hurler.
Spokane has a working agreement with Brooklyn. Considering the number of teams in the Dodger string, it is a wonder Branch Rickey Jr. can remember the name of a club 3000 miles away. But maybe the Deacon, will punch Spokane's card.
- Union-Bulletin, Sunday, June 29, 1947