Imperial Valley Press

BENCHWARMING
by Burdette Kinne
Post-Press Sports Editor

Did you ever wonder about the remarkable recovery of Richard Bartell, Detroit shortstop?

Well today Harry Grayson, an eastern sports editor, tells you the inside story of the Bartell recovery.

Richard Bartell was reported to be a broken-down rheumatic when the Chicago Cubs traded him to the Detroit club last winter for Billy Rogell.

But it is now obvious that Dick Bartell was suffering from nothing that Dennis Carroll couldn't cure.

It was the best swap the Tigers ever made.

Bartell has sparked the Tigers to the threshold of the American League throne room. Rogell has been released.

Though the Cubs were desperately in need of a shortstop. Bartell is authority for the statement that the management didn't even bother to check up on his physical condition before shipping him.

"And I was sound as a dollar." he laughs. "and happy to be sent to a high class club like Detroit given a fresh slant on things at 32 . . . after a dozen years in the National League."

"With no other club would I have Denny Carroll to put and keep me in the game."

Bartell's is the latest tribute to the veteran Carroll. the finest trainer in baseball.

Carroll has kept the ancient Charlie Gehringer and his aching back on the firing line day in and day out.

He restored life to Schoolboy Rowe's dead arm.

Carroll believed ankle trouble had kept Bartell on the sidelines in Chicago, but the shortstop pointed to a pulled muscle in his groin.

Carroll promptly corrected the difficulty and showed Bartell how to train to prevent a recurrence.

Carroll, one-time amateur boxer and champion swimmer. spent 22 years with the San Francisco Seals before the Detroit club paged him in the spring of 1932. He had many previous offers, but preferred the Pacific coast, where ailing major leaguers went to him with astonishing results.

It was the condition of the great Gehringer's arm that prompted the late Frank J. Navin to make Carroll an offer he couldn't refuse.

At the conclusion of the 1931 campaign, Gehringer was riding the bench-unable to throw the ball 30 feet. In Carroll's care. he started the season of 1932, and has been in the thick of things ever since.

Carroll. who professes to be nothing more than a masseur. but who mixes osteopathy with chiropody and polishes it all off with a large dose of common sense. brought back the arms of Mickey Cochrane. Goose Goslin, and General Crowder to help the Tigers to pennants in 1934 and '35.

And if they come down in front this trip. anybody associated with the Tigers will tell you that the name of the most valuable member of the party does not appear in the box score.

Denny Carroll's magic hands have as much to do with the Tigers' success as the war clubs of Greenberg. York and McCoskey and the strong right arm of Bo-Bo Newsom.