Slants on Sports

Due to the heavy hitting activities of a Jewish lad, the Detroit Tigers are leading the flag chasers in the American League, Hank Greenberg, of the Bronx and Texas, is chiefly responsible for the fact that the Tigers are sitting on top of the baseball heap at this stage of the game. Hitting well over three hundred, Hank has come through when hits were needed and when runs counted most.

Greenberg, of the Bronx, made good in a big way in Detroit and is a member of the famous “G” trio that is rapidly becoming the most feared group in the American League. Charlie Gehringer, who handles the second sacker, Goose Goslin, veteran ball player, and Hank Greenberg compose this slugging unit whose stick wielding has wrecked such havoc among American League pitchers this year.

Gehringer heads the lot with a batting average near the 400 percentage mark. Goslin trails closely. But what is most surprising is that Hank is well over the .300 marker and this is only his second season in big time baseball.

AN ALL-ROUND ATHLETE AT MONROE HIGH

Greenberg’s trip to the big leagues wasn’t an overnight accomplishment. But he had the stuff and still has what it takes, and as a result we freely predict that the name of Greenberg shall be on the same plane, if not higher, than Larrupin Lou Gehrig of the Yankees,

While in high school there was no sport for which Hank did not try out for.

He is a product of James Monroe High School in the Bronx and is by far the most versatile athlete ever graduated by that school. He starred on the football team as a backfield man and his skillful booting on the soccer team at Monroe accounted for city championships time and again. He was exceptionally brilliant at the pivot post on the basketball court, and needless to say, he was a Varsity letter man on the baseball team.

‘A BUSH LEAGUER FOR A SHORT TIME

Hundreds of big league aspirants spend years in the minors praying that some scout might see them in great form some day and thereby hurry their progress to the big time ball parks of the country. However, such was not the case with Hank Greenberg.

Graduating from Monroe in the summer of 1929 he was shipped out to the Texas bush leagues immediately. At once Hank started laying it on to the old apple and slambanged the ball for an average that still has to be equaled out in the Texas leagues. He was by far the heaviest hitter on the Dumont club for which he played two years.

Two years ago Hank was invited down to the spring training camp of the Detroit Tigers and played heads up baseball. So good was his spring record that he was kept on and played first last season in a manner that had Gehrig and Terry looking to their laurels. This year’s record speaks for itself. Though the baseball season isn’t over by a long shot—in fact by two and one-half months—Hank Greenberg of the Bronx is making history.

IT MUST BE THE CROTONA PARK AIR

Whatever this department may think of the Bronx women it {SPAN}cer###inly{/SPAN} takes its hat off to the {SPAN}ath###s{/SPAN} of the Bronx. They grow {SPAN}###n{/SPAN} big, strong, and good up where the Bronx River flows.

As the story goes, Hank grew up in the Crotona Park region and the air must have worked wonders with him. He stands well over six feet four and is only twenty-one years old.

Even while attending P.S. 44 Hank used to spend his afternoons growing taller and playing baseball all the time. Some of his former schoolmates say that Hank learned everything he knows in and around the park. Well, maybe there’s something to this statement. We only found out one or two things in parks but we doubt very much if it would put us in a big league ball club. That is, not the things we learned.

Only the other day Hank with the bases nearly packed. We’re rooting for Hank, and if you’ll drop in at the Yankee Stadium when the Tigers come to nip the Yankees again, we’re quite positive you’ll be rooting for this Jewish lad as heartily as we are.