Sport: Hero Without Spurs

It was only a training-camp game, but the big, rawboned rookie was understandably nervous. By acclamation, U.S. sport writers had made Clint Hartung the prize rookie of the year. Before his turn at bat last week in Phoenix, Ariz., he squatted down, twice picked up a handful of dirt to dry his sweating palms. Then Clint Hartung stepped to the plate for his first game in a New York Giant uniform.

His long legs spread far apart, Hartung waited menacingly. The first pitch was down the groove. With a huge stride and a loose-jointed lurch, he swung—and connected. The ball arched up and disappeared over a 30-foot fence, 370 feet away.

Rookie Hartung's home run the first time up did nothing to stop the fast-growing Hartung legend. About all anybody really knew about Clint Hartung was that he is an overgrown, 24-year-old farm boy from Hondo, Texas. On an Army Air Forces team last year, he had pitched and won 25 games, lost none, and had batted .567. In the story-slim days of spring training, that was enough for baseball writers. They seldom wrote a story of which Hartung was not the hero. One newsman broke down and confessed: "Hartung is human. He is, after all, Frank Merriwell and not Superman. He gets hungry. 'Boys,' he proclaimed after a pleasant chat, 'I must eat.' "

The big Texas farm boy felt on the spot, and showed it—at bat, by swinging at bad balls; in the outfield (where the Giants are trying him, instead of as a pitcher), by misjudging fly balls. He also showed a tendency to go for a line drive with his head averted, and a disinclination to block a bouncing ball the way all good outfielders do—with his body as well as his glove.

Judging by the record of prize rookies, he had about a 50-50 chance of making good. In 1924, the papers were full of the Athletics' Paul Strand, who cost them $75,000 and didn't last the season; in 1940, it was the Athletics' Benny McCoy, now no longer in the major leagues; in 1941, it was the Cubs' "Mad Russian" Lou Novikoff, who has since gone back to the Pacific Coast League where he came from. There had also been publicized rookies who fared better: 1926's Mel Ott, 1937's Bobby Feller and 1936's Joe Di-Maggio. Drawls Clint Hartung: "I've made no promises and I've got nothing to live up to. Those sport writers will probably forget about me after I strike out a few times."