Thursday, July 27, 1950

              W  L  Pct GB
Yakima ..... 62 39 .614 —
Wenatchee .. 60 43 .583 3½
Tacoma ..... 57 41 .582 3½
Tri-City ... 54 47 .535 8
Victoria ... 43 58 .426 19
Salem ...... 41 56 .423 19
Vancouver .. 42 58 .420 19½
Spokane .... 42 59 .416 20

SALEM, July 27—Yakima's boisterous Bears, riding high with a 10-garne win streak climaxed by Thursday night's 20-3 shellacking of the Salem Senators, sped homeward to face the challenging Tacoma Tigers in the feature Western International League attraction.
The title-defending Bears gained a half game on the rest of the league Thursday night as rain washed out all other games.
Now three games ahead of Wenatchee and 3½ out in front of Tacoma, Yakima is hoping to duplicate its performance of five weeks ago against the Tigers. When they last entertained the Tacomans, Yakima swept the three-game series. Such a performance now, with the season two-thirds over, might well doom the Tacomans' title hopes.
Yakima left little to chance Thursday night, and it was well that only 188 fans were in the stands to see the way they treated the Oregonians. Larry Powell, who went the distance for the Bears, gave the Solons two runs in the first inning before the rollicking Bears opened up a 24-hit attack highlighted by Jerry Zuvella's two triples and a brace of doubles. They scored ten runs through the second, third and fourth frames.
Salem starter Bill Osborn was routed in the fourth but the Bears hit just as freely against his successor, Johnny Burak.
Zuvella knocked in five runs with his batting display. Reno Cheso and Dave Helton also clubbed out four blows each and every player in the Yakima lineup garnered at least one bingle.
Six errors further humiliated the Solons who dropped from fifth to sixth with the defeat.
Yakima ..... 015 402 143—20-24-0
Salem ...... 200 000 100— 3- 9-6
Powell and Tornay; Osborn, Burak (4) and Beard.

Wenatchee Pilot Protests Scorer
VANCOUVER, B. C., July 26 (CP) — Rupert Thompson, manager of Wenatchee Chiefs of the Western International league, didn't like the way the official scorer was handling the Wenatchee-Vancouver Caps game Wednesday night. He got mad, caused a rhubarb and now must answer to the league president.
Rupert's temper began to flare when the scorer called Wenatchee's Don Fracchia's bouncer to second base an error instead of a hit. Ray Tran was given the error and Fracchia got on base without an official at bat.
Rupert blasted the scorer at the end of the first game and followed it up by refusing to hand in his line-up for the second game of the scheduled double header.
WILfan note: The identity of the official scorer will remain a mystery. I've looked at stories on the game in all three Vancouver newspapers. Erwin Swangard of the Province was the CP stringer. He doesn't reveal who the scorer was. Keith Matthews in the News Herald doesn't either. The Sun doesn't mention the incident at all. Pat Karl, the current official scorer of the Vancouver Canadians, thought it was Eric Whitehead of the Province. I thought it might be Clancy Loranger (I believe he was with the News Herald that year). But we likely will never know.

Alf Cottrell
[Vancouver Province, July 27, 1950]
It was only 11 a.m. when I roused Bud Beasley at his hotel. I apologized as best I could. The little Capilano pitching veteran said it was all right, it was getting toward breakfast time anyway.
He shaved and brushed up, then we strolled to a nearby coffee house. He ordered a “stack of hots” and, for yours truly, a strawberry shake. I asked him about life and travelling and such in the small minors.
There were some interesting jumps in this league, he said. The Capilanos played at Spokane last Sunday night. Most all of them eat their big meal of the day after a night game. This night, though, manager Bill Brenner had the bus waiting for them. They were playing here Monday, 415 miles from Spokane.
• • •
The bus wheeled into the night through the dry belt. They ran into detoured caused by road repair jobs. The bus was a de luxe affair, but the bumpy detours reminded World War 2 veterans of the Burma Road. The kids on the club, bumped out of restless slumber, were included to think they had awakened in Korea.
They passed through sizeable towns. Players looked longingly at occasional café signs. They notched up their belts. On and on. The dry-tongued third baseman, Jimmy Robinson, said, “I wouldn’t mind if I knew what we were trying to prove.”
At last, in the middle of the night, they stopped at a town named Quincy. Bud said, “You have a hard time convincing those guys Brenner hasn’t got shares in that Quincy eating house.”
Beasley grinned continually as he talked. The cook was also the waiter. The hungry load of players shot orders at him. Reg Clarkson, typically different, ordered Post Toasties and chilli. Meanwhile players sent their glasses of milk back to the kitchen. It was dead sour.
• • •
But travelling in this league wasn’t bad. In the West Texas you went by private car, mostly. Dressed in the hotel and drove to the ball park in uniform. They showered at the hotel afterwards.
The Far West and Sunset loops were like that, but slightly better. In the coast and other Triple-A leagues life was streamlined. It was in your contract that you got Grade A transportation and the best hotels.
Mostly you went by air. But it was in your contract that they couldn’t make you fly. Some of the veterans, like Red Mann and Guy Fletcher, often backed away from air trips.
Bud said that for a spell, when he was with Seattle, he was running a baseball school for the Rainiers. They let the club go south without him. The pitchers ran into trouble in San Francisco, so the front office decided Bud had to go down and help out.
• • •
He was on the field in Seattle, teaching the kids, at 1 p.m. In uniform. He was on a place bound for San Francisco at 3 p.m. He pitched for the Rainiers that night and was back in his hotel room in Seattle by 2 a.m.
The season he spent with the House of David was the worst. Every stop was a one-night stand. Big towns and whistle-stops but mainly the latter. Shower at the park or shower at the hotel. There was Battle Mountain, for instance.
It is smack in the middle of Nevada. The ball park is just a big alkali field. No stands. Fans nose their cars to the edge of the field and the team passes the hat. That was one place, I said, where they had to shower at the hotel, then? “No,” Bud said. “You might say that town had a few short-comings. There wasn’t but two bathtubs in the whole town, and neither of them was at the hotel.

NON WIL BASEBALL NEWS
Fans, Laws, President All Blue in the South
COLUMBIA, S.C., July 27—Baseball ticket taker Henry Suydam got a complaint from a fan.
"Why," Suydam was asked did South Atlantic Baseball League president Earl Blue "rule out Sunday baseball at Greenville?"
"He didn't," Suydam explained, "the Greenville City Council ruled it out."
"I saw in the paper about it," declared the unconvinced fan. "It said "blue law invoked"."