St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 32

2 Man. July IT, 1972 ST. LOUIS POST'DISPATCH Baseball Could Profit From A Limit On Overtime bob broeg snorts en iror Rosenbloom Fisch Durocher er ing club's disadvantage. I In the interest of fair play, baseball desperately neods to play out, rather than wash out, all abbreviated games. In the Cubs' case in Atlanta, instead of anew the next night, Chicago would have had two men on base with none out in the eighth inning of the tied game.

Whether one pitch has been made or just one pitch Is left, a rain game should be resumed. And even if management desires not to provide readmission for spectators caught short beyond a certain point, the present five-inning rain check still should be in effect. But no hit or run, no strikeout, walk, error or any other play should be wiped out. Nor, any fairly gained advantage, either. Hockey And Football, Too; Again, to express an opinion where! none was asked: The National Hockey League, probably the coziest, sports cartel, emerged as both coldhearted and unpatriotic when it refused to include Bobby Hull on Team Canada foe the long-awaited series with the Soviet nationals.

I From Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau down through the provinces, Canadians are properly put out that the NHLj would junk the Golden Jet just because he has jumped to the rival World Hockey Association. If the NHL wants to test in court Hull's right to go to Winnipeg for a sizable piece of the action, well enougti. But Canada's reputation as the fountainhead of the worths best hockey is at stake. Manfully, though still recovering from knee surgery Bobby Orr is talking about playing the second part of the series in Russia. Even if Orr still weren't questionable, Hull, (personable, popular, powerful and the long-ball hitter of tine rink, would be necessary to show Canadian hockey at its Maybe I'm naive, Ferdinand, but jl thought Team Canada meant what the name implied.

Heck, nothing is sacred any more. First college Jfootball coaches began to jump contracts, then pro basketball (players and now even a clubowner has jumped from one clubt to another. I That's what the incredible deal by which Carroll jRosen- With apologies to Jimmy Cannon, the colorful old Broadway sports writer who might have stepped out of the pages of Damon Runyon, "Nobody asked me, but Big league baseball would do itself, the players and, in this opinion, the public a big favor by resuming, not replaying, all rain games and by setting a length limit on extra-inning games. For one, the Cardinals' management has proposed some kind of tie-breaker to replace the marathon game, like the one here last Tuesday that went 15 innings and past midnight. One way to encourage a decision, the Redbirds say, would be to put a runner on second base for each team beginning with, say, the eleventh inning or by providing four outs a side after the tenth.

The Cards' research shows, by the way, that about half of baseball's extra-inning games end in the first overtime, round. To me, the Redbirds' proposals, though reflecting refreshing willingness to change, are too radical. Why not merely suspend a game after 12 innings and resume it before the next regularly scheduled contest between the two teams, unless that happens to be the getaway day or night of a series? No matter when the thirteenth inning is played, I'd have a cutoff at which point 15 innings, let's say the game officially became a tie. All records would count and, if feasible or necessary, the game then would be replayed in its entirety at a later date. If, by chance, three additional innings of a suspended 12-inning game were needed and were played prior to a regularly scheduled contest that also went extra innings, the limit of 12 in any given game on any date thus would bring the maximum to 15 innings for that calendar date.

That is, except for doubleheaders in which, if there were two overtime games, the total could be as many as 24 innings. Too many, yes, but at least a highly unlikely maximum rather than the present method by which there is absolutely no limit. With the old 12:50 a.m. curfew lifted, the way ball clubs reach a level of ineptitude after they've played so many in-nings on a hot night, one of these days a couple of teams are Once Upon A Frog NBC Keeps going to stumble along all night. Chances of injuries will increase and there'll be nobody left in the ball park to watch them.

And that won't be good for anyone except maybe the concessionaire. Of Bobby Fischer, Leo Durocher Still apologizing to Mr. Cannon for venturing unsolicited opinions: When the Atlanta grounds crew annoyed Leo Durocher by what he interpreted as tardiness in covering the field in the eighth inning of a game that was rained out, The Lip reacted typically. i The veteran manager of the Chicago Cubs, who can be as annoying as Bobby Fischer, the spoiled wunderkind of chess, took out his displeasure the next night on the press and public by declining to disclose his batting order before the replayed game. Just as Fischer has displayed abominably poor judgment, horrible sportsmanship and bad manners in his over-publicized match in Iceland with Russian grand master Boris Spas-sky, so Durocher has made a career out of feuding foolishly and unnecessarily.

More than one person here, including this one, has winced at the cutting caricature of the ugly American that has emerged internationally through Fischer's petulance. Could it be that boorish Bobby is building his defenses, i.e. alibis, in advance of anticipated defeat? For a guy who also has often proved a pain, in the posterior, Durocher has a heckuva point about the injustice of rain games in general and any one in particular in which a home club's ground crew is suspected of dawdling to the visit bloom gave up his Baltimore Colts for the Los Angeles Rams amounts to. Funny thing, some folks at first thought it meant that Roman Gabriel would be eating seafood on Chesapeake. Bay and that Johnny Unitas and associates would be hunting in the Hollywood hills.

But the players stayed out. Rosenbloom, who made a for-- tune in Baltimore, then became disenchanted with the civic 8 fathers, and vice versa, will wind up with the Rams, who arf.r as good as a license. to steal in LA. 1 The new Baltimore Robert Irsay and Willard Ka-iJ land, reportedly have to come up with $19,000,000 to satisfy the Rams stockholders, including the estate of Dan Reaves In the exchange of shoulder pads with Rosenblum, they'll inherit the Colts' cash, plus $2,000,000 indemnification still due Baltimore for having agreed (with Cleveland and Pittsburgh) to move to the American Conference in the pro football merger. Rosenbloom, miffed at foot-dragging over building a flew stadium in Baltimore and also at what amounted to a virtual boycott of Colts' exhibition games, hailed the franchise-swan ping as a capital gains coup.

Nobody asked me, Mr. Cannon, but I wonder whether Uncle Sam's tax men will be nearly so optimistic about Mr. Hosenbloom's audacious front-office option play. Giesler Hopping LOOKING FOR AN ECONOMY GAR? i Frogs Lose Opener; Pittsburgh Hexf Foe The Frogs, resting at the bottom of the Ameridan Soccer League's Midwestern Conference after suffering a 2-0 loss in their ASL opener at Cleveland Saturday nfeht, return to the practice field this week! in preparation! for a contest Saturday nfght at Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, with itn 0-2-1 record, is fourth in ihe five-team; Midwestern Coniference.

Detroit leads with a 1-0-2 mark. Coach Pete Traina'is Frogs will open their ASH, home schedule Sunday, Joly 30, against Cincinnati, V-'aV-ViKnN LET ME SHOW YOU OUR LARGE SELECTION OF NEW 72 VEGAS '-VAUhV-'iV I 9 ri i lm-I 'LaL XJ a man of all sports in his life. He's had soccer teams and baseball teams and hockey teams not to mention his role in establishing the Missouri Dart Association. "Ah yes, the dart association. It's the greatest thing that ever happened to beer.

We sold four-and-a-half barrels at our state tournament," Giesler said. Giesler became a baseball commissioner four years ago. "It happened because I got mad at the way the state tournament was being run," he said. "We took a team to Mexico for the state finals and everything was so disorganized. I think they were taking the pairings right out of their pockets.

"So the next day I wrote Ray Dumont (late NBC commissioner) in Wichita and complained. The day after Dumont called me. He said, 'Say, why don't you take it over That was all Giesler needed. The first year, his state tournament had 18 teams, then 23, then 29 and this year 32. "Oh, these tournaments really don't bother me," said a perspiring Giesler.

"I've already had my heart attack." On the field, 6-foot-6 lefthander Steve Walsh had finished pitching St. Louis U. Club past Aalco, the third time the Billikens have beaten the Tigers this summer. Two more teams were preparing to take the field, and when they were done, two more would come on, and when they were finished ad infinitum. At Heine Meine.

Park, where baseball action Saturday had lasted from 9 a.m. to 1:30 a.m., six BOB WMLIS NASL Sfandirngs By Rick Hummel Of the Post-Dispatch Staff At last, it can be told the real story behind the naming of the St. Louis Frogs. The revelation was made yesterday at ABC Park in the fourth inning of a semipro baseball game between St. Louis U.

Club and the Aalco Tigers. St. Louis U. won, 5-1, to advance into the quarterfinals of the winners' bracket in the marathon National Baseball Congress Missouri state tournament. Source of the story was Walter Giesler, commissioner 'of the state baseball program and founder of the Frogs, a semipro soccer team.

As frog-master Giesler watched his third game of the day, and mindful that he still had three more to see before he slept, he lapsed into reverie on one of his favorite subjects. "I've been waiting all day for you to ask me about the Frogs," Giesler said, beaming. "It all started when we remodeled our (Giesler-Jorgen) sporting goods building. "When the construction workers were tearing down part of the building, one of them found a cast-iron frog. Apparently, contractors think it's good luck to put a frog in the wall.

One of the workmen gave it to me and I put it on my desk." Then Giesler obtained his franchise in the American Soccer League. He needed a name for his team. "I wanted to call them the Missouri Mules but somebody already had that," Giesler said. "I thought about Mustangs and Cougars and other dumb names like that, but I wanted a name that no one else had." He looked down at his desk and there was his answer starting beadily at him. Rrribbitt.

And the Frogs were born. "We've got frogs on our letterheads and frogs on our, uniforms and XORTHERV DIVISION BP TK 3 IS 5 COUPES SEDANS AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION 4-SPEEDS AIR CONDITIONING ETC. GT EQUIPMENT Nfw York 5 Rochester 5 Toronto 4 Montreal .1 1 13 2 12 13 44 40 COME IN TODAY FOR A DEMONSTRATION RIDE! SOUTHERN lllVISillON bp ru. STARS 5 3 14 fvl Dalla? .1 4 11 40 Atlanta 4 6 I 12 :19 Miamo 2 7 I 9 24 SATURrtAY'S RKSI I TS Wfder Bremen (Germany) 4, Miami 1 i Dallas 2. Rochester 0 1 MIMMY'tt RESCI.tl'S Atlanta 1, Stars 0 Montreal 2.

New York 2 i WEDNESDAY'S (iAME Weder Bremen (Oermanvi at Toronto SATl RDAY'S fiAMKS Toronto at St. Louis, 9 pyn. Dallas at New York SINDAY'S OAMKS Miami at Montreal Giesler sighed and returned to the matter at hand, running one of the most monstrous tournaments ever undertaken a 32-team, double-elimination tourney to be played on only two weekends. Yesterday's schedule called for a mere 18 games, to be played at five different sites. Or rather make that 16 games at four sites.

Two losers' bracket games at Maplewood Park were pre-empted by a company picnic. And so, at the end of 30 games this weekend, there still remained 26 of the original 32 teams. Finals are scheduled for next Sunday Giesler permitting. "You're damned right that's a lot of games," Giesler replied to a question. "I've been going nuts setting up these parks.

And all those umpires I'm going to hate to see the payroll." Giesler, still ruddy-cheeked at age 61, has been BARF0RD CHEVROLET 8500 MARYLAND (IN CLAYTON) PA 5-3600 more games were being played. "It's a real bargain," said super-sportsman Giesler. "For only one dollar, you can see six ball games. You can't beat that." Bring on the Frogs. a Never i 1 In ao I BRAKES RELIEVED UvJUDUUvJ AND Oil CHANGE Big Red Open Training Camp LAKE FOREST, 111., July 17 More than 60 players were expected to report today for the opening of the football Cardinals' training camp at Lake Forest College.

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