TRAINING TIME NEEDED BY TEAM VARIES
"General Manager Muddy Ruel of the Tigers allows as how he can't find much rhyme or reason in the baseball edict which states that players can't get on the spring training expense account until March 1.
Not that Muddy is anxious to expand the $80,000 it costs to transport a big-league team around the Southland, or even decrease it. Just that he thinks that each club should be able to set its own starting date.
'Look at it this way,' he pointed out between pipe puffs. 'The regular season starts around the second week of April. Everybody has to be ready to go by then. That's definite. I think that's all that needs to be definite ... the length of the training season should be flexible.'
Ruel's reasoning goes like this: The training demands of a major league club vary from year to year. Some seasons a club goes to camp with a team of veterans whose jobs are secure.
'All that these fellows need is ten days to get the kinks out of their system and then 12 to 15 exhibition games to get ready for the season,' Muddy insisted. 'That's a month at the most.'
A couple of years later that same team might be going through a rebuilding program with a flock of rookies fighting for a regular job. It might have a new manager who is getting his first look at his players.
'This type of team needs a longer training period,' said Ruel. 'Maybe six weeks, maybe seven. Maybe more. That's why I claim that a hard and fast starting date for spring drills doesn't make sense in baseball.' "
-Lyall Smith, Detroit Free Press (Baseball Digest, April 1955)
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