Thursday, August 15, 1946

                W  L  Pct GB
Wenatchee .... 72 45 .615 —
Bremerton .... 63 45 .583 4½
Salem ........ 65 49 .570 5½
Tacoma ....... 59 53 .527 10½
Spokane ...... 48 54 .471 16½
Yakima ....... 52 59 .468 17
Vancouver .... 45 66 .405 24
Victoria ..... 41 74 .357 30

BREMERTON, Aug. 15—Bremerton's home runs provided the victory punch tonight as the Bremerton Bluejackets nosed out Victoria 6-5 in a Western International League baseball game.
Bill Barisoff, the league's leading clouter, got his 32nd homer to move closer to the league record of 37. Bill Reese, runner-up to Barisoff in the home run department, got his 24th.
Each team got eight hits, bu the homers and three Victoria errors gave the home team its edge.
Victoria ....... 030 020 000—5 8 3
Bremerton ... 040 010 01x—6 8 0
Chapetta and Stumpf; Pintar, Medeghini (2) and Volpi.

VANCOUVER, Aug. 15—Vancouver Capilanos went on a hitting spree tonight to make a three-straight win of their best-of-three series series with the Spokane Indians here. The Caps captured the Western International League tilt, 16-8.
Ray Orteig, hitting one of two circuit clouts of the night, made it a total of 20 homers for the season to date, five in this series. Catcher Ray Spurgeon hammered out the other in the second.
Reg Clarkson hit the first ball from Wayne Collins for a single, stole second and scored on the first of Jim Estrada's three hits. Orteig then smacked a two-run homer.
Mel Steiner, the Indians' starry left fielder, collected five for five, two of them counting for runs, and walked once.
- - -
VANCOUVER [Clancy Loranger, Aug. 16]—Vancouver Capilanos are going to try for something new today—four straight victories.
Four times this year they’ve managed to string three wins together, but the big No. 4 has always stopped them. They put together their current trio last night at Cap Stadium against the hapless Spokane Indians, registering an easy 16-8 win over Glenn Wright’s crew, who contributed 10 errors.
They’ll have somewhat tougher opposition tonight, though, because the strong Salem Senators will be on hand for a three-game stint, including a double-header, Saturday night.
JONAS TO HURL
Chances of the locals breaking the four-game jinx are fairly good tonight, too, because little Pete Jonas, currently our most effective hurler, will be tossing ‘em up at the Solons. Pete has won all three of his starts without too much trouble.
Speaking of trouble, you might ask Spokane’s Wayne Collins what he thinks about the subject. The ex-Montreal and Seattle hurler took quite a beating as the Brownies teed off for 21 hits last night. Collins gave up 18 of them, including Ray Orteig’s 20th homer, and another to Ray Spurgeon, before Al Raimondi took over in the seventh.
Lou Estes led the Vancouver hitting parade with four blows, and everybody except Jim Hedgecock only had one chance to the dish, though, because he didn’t show up until the seventh, when Ronnie Bryant, our starting moundsman, showed signs of coming apart at the seams.
RICE WINS TITLE
As a matter of fact, after about the fifth frame, the major sport at the Fifth Avenue ball yard consisted of heckling Umpire Jack Rice, who is so far out in front for the fans’ “most unpopular” award that we hereby concede.
[WILfan note: For the record, the errors were by left fielder Mel Steiner (two), right fielder Frankie Hawkins, centre fielder Al Kubiak (2), shortstop John Anderson (2), catcher Neil Clifford and Collins (2) … Despite all the errors, only four Vancouver runs were unearned … Orteig finished with four RBIs, Spurgeon three, and Jimmy Estrada has a pair, while Steiner and Gale Bishop (with three hits) had a pair each for the Indians]
Spokane ....... 010 040 300— 8 16 10
Vancouver .... 321 360 01x—16 21 2
Collins, Raimondi (7) and Clifford; Bryant, Hedgecock (7) and Spurgeon.

TACOMA, Aug. 15—Steve Gerkin administered the white wash to his former teammates here tonight, pitching a six-hitter as the Tacoma Tigers trimmed the Salem Senators, 4-0, to sweep this Western International baseball league series.
Salem ........ 000 000 000—0 6 3
Tacoma ..... 010 000 03x—4 8 2
Gunnerson, Fallin (3) and Salmon; Gerkin and Kemper.

SPOKANE, Aug. 15—Getting to three Yakima pitchers for a barrage of 18 hits, the pacesetting Wenatchee Chiefs took the Stars into camp to the tune of 19-5 in the third game of their Western International Leage series.
Wenatchee ...... 005 572 000—19 19 2
Yakima ............ 000 130 010— 5 10 7
McCollum and Fitzgerald; McHugh, Simon (3), Bohnen (4) and McConnell.

Gray Released
VICTORIA, Aug. 16—Stan Gray, utility infielder of the Victoria Athletics, has been given his release, Reg Patterson, business manager of the club announced yesetrday.
Gray, formerly with the Seattle and Los Angeles clubs of the Coast League, was signed by the Athletics shortly after Al Steele, regular second baseman, left to return to his home in Oakland.
Sharing second base duties with Frank Cirimele and Walt Raimondi, Gray had been out of the last few games due to a sore back.

Clarkson Going Up
VANCOUVER, Aug. 16—Baseball's big time is beckoning Reg Clarkson, the all-around athlete from UBC currently playing a lot of outfield for the Vancouver Capilanos in his first professional baseball season.
The Brooklyn Dodgers have asked for a price on him, General Manager Bob Brown said last night, and are anxious to make a cash-plus-player deal. However, Brown admitted that he was unlikely to make the deal, having his own plans for the popular outfielder.
"They have too many farm clubs," said Brown, "and I wouldn't like to see Reg kicking around in the minors. He's got everything needed for a big leaguer but experience."
Clarkson spent spring training worried about breaking into the lineup, but took over the regular centre fielder job from Silverthorn and has been starring there and hitting the ball hard ever since.

It Says Here…
By CLANCY LORANGER
[Vancouver News-Herald, August 16, 1946]
“Well,” I asked Bob Brown the other night, “how about that Ray Orteig? “Do you think he’ll do?”
“Nice ball player,” Bob admitted, “You know, if you had two or three ball players who could hit pretty good, you could carry a man like Orteig on his fielding alone.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “I guess you’re right. He does fairly well around that third sack at that.”
And the husky youngster does, too. There isn’t too much that gets past him, and once he knocks a ball down he could read a couple of chapters of a good book and still toss the runner out. Got the best arm of any infielder in the league, that’s all.
HITS FAIR LICK
But I got to thinking about Bob’s statement, and I kind figured maybe he was kidding a bit. You see, that was the night Orteig had blasted three home runs, one over each fence. Yeah, that’s right. He hits a little, too.
As a matter of fact, this same Mr. Orteig has become the most valuable piece of baseball bric a brac in Brown’s stable. Unfortunately, for Ruby Robert, he isn’t really one of Bob’s personal chattels. He belongs to the Boston Red Sox, who obviously don’t need him right now.
Here was some talk, earlier on, that the local Mr. Baseball was about to purchase Ray’s contract from the Bosox. Ernie Johnson, the Red Sox scout, was around here in May or June, and he is said to have gone on record as follows: “Orteig is a fair country hitter, but he won’t do as a third baseman.”
Maybe Johnson has a spy in our midst. In any case, he must have further reports on our hero, because I asked Bob pointedly the other night if Ray was still a Boston man.
“Yes,” he replied sadly.
SAD SCRANTON STAY
Orteig himself is probably a little sad when he thinks of his connections with the Yawkey empire. Not that the Sox would be a bad club to play for, but Ray’s dealings with the management haven’t always been cosy.
Ray, who was plucked from around Vancouver, Washington by Earl Sheely, must have learned to love Vancouver as an address.
After a year here, he was shipped East to play for Scranton of the Eastern League. Somewhere along the way, Ray had learned to love regular play, too. He just didn’t look good sitting on a bench, he figured, and after watching a few games from the Scranton dugout, he packed up and headed west.
He was sitting in our stands one night—he just couldn’t escape from Vancouver—when the Caps’ regular this-sacker got hurt. Luckily, Earl Sheely was on hand, too, and after a few phone calls back and forth between Sheely and Boston, Ray was with us to stay again.
PITCHER TO PITCHER
Well, not quite to stay. There was a slight four-year hitch in the Coast Guard, but we got to see quite a bit of him even then.
Last year, you will recall, he stood out like measles in a nudist colony, as he pitched and hit the Norvans to the Senior League title.
It was his performance here, too, that gave folks the idea that Ray was a pitcher. He was striking out 14 or 15 fellows a game, and generally looked like a pretty good moundsman.
He came to the Caps this spring, you will remember, as a chucker, and if he got the odd hit now and then, nobody would complain.
But he never did settle down to the tossing form he’d shown before, and finally, when his arm swelled up to a couple times normal size after a losing effort, he stopped pitching officially.
There was nobody happier than Ray Orteig when he started playing regular again. Although I guess Bob Brown, and the fans, aren’t shedding any tears because his name’s in the lineup every day. They’ve always been prejudiced towards fellows who hit .360.