Atlanta Daily World

NEW YORK (UPI) Branch Rickey continued his new Continental baseball league will come up with enough good players to join established major league teams. His theory is there isn't much different in minor league talent from the top minor league clubs. The recent World Series performers of Dodgers Larry Sherry, rookie Craig and Maury Wills prove it. They all opened the 1959 season in the minors. But Rickey's theory still is just that - a theory. Sherry, Craig and Wills had been found, developed and were owned by the Dodgers. By the time the Continental League finally develops and owns a sizable group of similar players it'll be long past its opening target date of 1961. Still, few people get rich arguing with Rickey and chances are he and his colleagues will come up with a passable assortment of young players on the way up and oldsters on the way down that'll satisfy most cities - except possibly New York. "Everything is relative in competition, anyway," he insists. "A good game is the thing. There's no question about the minors being a stamping ground of fringe players who could hang on in the American or National leagues if they had the chance. Even Frank Lane of the Indians admits as much. Long a proponent of orderly expansion of the majors to 10 teams each, he says "every year I have 12 to 15 players to send out to triple-A minor league clubs and I'm not always sure I option out the right ones. Now if every club has that many fringe players that would be such a stock for eight new clubs with talent."