Thursday, August 21, 1947

WESTERN INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE
STANDINGS after Thursday's games
              W  L Pct. GB
Spokane .... 77 57 .575 --
Bremerton .. 76 57 .571 --
Victoria ... 75 60 .556 2½
Salem ...... 71 58 .550 3½
Vancouver .. 70 62 .530 6
Tacoma ..... 63 69 .477 13
Yakima ..... 52 80 . 394 24
Wenatchee .. 45 86 .344 30½

A's Nab Wild Battle
VANCOUVER, Aug. 21 — Victoria's hard-hitting Athletics smashed out 19 safe blows and combined them with five Capilano errors here tonight to down the Vancouver Western League entry, 13-12, in the first of a four-game series.
If was the fourth win in five starts for the A's against the Caps.
In a wild game which saw Victoria twice come from behind after taking an early lead to snatch victory. Vic Mastro, Pat Patterson, John Hooper and Bill White led the winning attack.
Mastro lined out two home runs and a single and batted in four runs, Patterson figured in every rally with four hits, including a double, White picked up two triples and drove three runners across while Hooper hatted in three runs with as many singles.
Athletics found the offerings of starting hurler Bob Snyder to their liking. He pitched four balls before the score mounted to 3-0. Patterson singled on the first offering, Hooper followed suit, only to be out at second trying for a double. Bill White tripled and Mastro homered on the next two Snyder deliveries.
Vancouver came back in their half with four tallies to take a short-lived lead, but Patterson againt started the visitors rolling in the second by singling and tearing in all the way from first on Hooper's hit. White got his second triple and Mastro singled him over.
Bob Jensen went to the showers in the fourth inning when two walks and a single loaded the bags and Frank Mullens poled one of his Capilanos Stadium specials over the right field wall — a scant 270-feet away!
Jim Arnold relieved and was reached for the third four-run rally by the Caps in the seventh after Victoria had tied it up in the sixth when Hooper's hit scored Arnold and Patterson, who had walked and doubled.
Down but not out, the A's came back in the eighth with a five-run uprising. Mastro's home run with two out tied the count as 12-12. Jack Harshman singled and all hands were safe when Buddy Hjelmaa booted Babe Jensen's grounder. John Cavalli's single plated the winning run.
Victoria ............ 330 002 050—13 19 0
Vancouver ........ 400 400 400—12 10 5
R. Jensen, Arnold (4) and Mastro; Snyder, Robertson (2), Hedgecock (8) and Stumpf.

WENATCHEE, Aug 21 — The Spokane Indians maintained a half-game lead over the rest of the Western International League on Thursday by doubling the Wenatchee Chiefs, 8-4.
Spokane pushed over four runs in the opening inning on three singles and George Schmees' triple, then sewed up the game with Jack Phillips' homer in the third and consecutive four-basers by Bud Hicks and Bob Morgan with two out in the ninth.
Steve Andrade tripled and singled to drive in three Wenatchee tallies and scored the fourth himself.
Spokane ........... 401 000 102—8 13 0
Wenatchee ....... 000 030 100—4 10 0
Werbowski and Bufflap; Vivalda, Waltho (9) and Winter.

BREMERTON, Aug. 21 — Eddie Murphy's home run after Jimmy Estrada's double broke a 3-3 tie in the ninth inning, enabling Bremerton Bluejackets to down Tacoma, 5-3, in a Western International League game here tonight.
Tacoma ............. 030 000 000—3 9 0
Bremerton .......... 200 010 002—5 10 0
Walden and Kuper; Marshall and Volpi.

YAKIMA, Aug. 21 — Yakima Stars had two four-innings, the fifth and the seventh, in turning back Salem Senators, 11-4, tonight in a Western International League match.
Hank Robinson, with five singles in six trips to the plate, was the big gun in the victors' 15-hit attack. Salem, although garnering 11 base blows, could only manufacture four tallies, half of them driven in by Bob Moore, a former Yakima player.
Salem ............... 002 000 101— 4 11 1
Yakima ............. 301 040 41x—13 15 1
Sporer, Laroy (2), Wilson (6) and Beard, Mosler (8); Ward and Phillips.

Mohr Sorry
VANCOUVER, Aug. 22 — Lee Mohr, the second-baseman whose almost assured call-up to Seattle was suddenly cancelled, has told Vancouver Capilanos General Manager Bob Brown he is sorry he jumped the club after Tuesday's double-header.
He is still in Vancouver, and it remains a question whether Brown will accept the apology and allow him to return.
The Capilanos have obtained Cy Stevens, who batted 0 for 5 tonight, and was charged with an error in seven put-out chances. He had one assist.

Mohr’s Side Has Points To It, Too
By DON CARLSON
[Vancouver Sun Sports Editor, Aug. 22, 1947]
When Lee Mohr, the ex-Marine who plays second base for the Caps “jumped” the club in Victoria Thursday, he committed the supreme faux pas of baseballdom, according to the rules. But before he’s crucified for “disloyalty” to Vancouver, let his side of the affair be heard.
For Mohr, by his act, may stand today at a crossroads of his ball career. By missing Thursday’s game in Victoria, he sinned more grievously, according to baseball’s one-way code, than the clergyman who puffed a Lucky in the pulpit or the plumber who fixed a wall plug.
Let no tears be shed for his owners, the Seattle Rainiers, whose “rights” are protected by the rules which the baseball moguls have conceived for the preservation of “law and order” in the game and which tie up their chattels tighter than Jane Russell’s bodice.
If sympathy is in order in l’affaire Mohr, it seems to this writer it should be given to Mohr himself, who, like the other hired hands in organized ball, became shorn of the kind of bargaining rights most working men guard with burning zeal the moment he signed a Seattle contract last spring.
Mohr came to Vancouver armed with verbal promises from Seattle’s general manager Earl Sheely and manager Jo Jo White that he was on 24-hour recall, and would be brought back to the triple A club instantly [if] injuries occurred in the Rainiers’ roster.
A Tough Lesson
Within the past month Seattle reached the point where its “old men” began hobbling about like the star exhibits at Mayo Bros. But did they remember that springtime promise? No, sir. Instead, they went outside their own organization and bought replacements from other clubs.
Lee Mohr learned a tough lesson from that one. A promise in business—especially baseball—is hardly a promise if it isn’t written down, witnessed, and smeared with the great seal of the high commissioner himself.
Now, where does Mohr find himself? Because baseball is organized as it is, he can’t quit and find himself a job with another boss in the same Coast League. By kicking his heels up here Thursday, he faces a fine and suspension.
But if Seattle wants to fire him this very moment, they can, summarily, and he’s through.
I am not daring to question the soundness of this remarkable piece of baseball logic, which has always seemed to me to be strongly reminiscent of the prevailing laws in that old English era when moppets toiled in the coal mines.
But I am daring to answer criticism of Mohr for what has been described as a “traitorous act” to the Caps in their “pennant drive.”
At 26, Mohr has got to cut corners if he wants to go up in baseball. Some critics don’t think he is triple A calibre. He’s told me thinks he is. That should entitle him to a fairer trial than Seattle gave him in seven games this spring.
Dramatic Fate
Of course, somewhere off-stage, the gentle hands of the Caps’ Robert P. Brown seem to be twirling their thumbs. It wouldn’t be too much of an educated guess to assume that Bob, without a single infield replacement, came up with a ringing, hands-off plea to Sheely last week when the scouts got word that Mohr was going back up.
Brown’s plight, of course, was not Mohr’s fault—but it seems to have been his nemesis.
Mohr’s blow-up has been a dramatic example of the fate to which minor leaguers commit themselves when they sign on the dotted.
And since we can’t change the rules, let’s hold back the razzberries for a boy who’s trying to get ahead in the biggest organized jungle since Barnam.