The flying squad of the Three Little Steamshovels, out to develop some big league baseball players who aren't from the corn country or the south, landed is Briggs Cage Saturday and dropped a few hints to the assembled mob of high school coaches, H.A.A. moguls and passers-by on the care and feeding of future stars. The upshot of the session was the startling intelligence that each ballplayer is an individual problem and must be treated as such by his coach.

All the consulting exports of the day, Earl Torgesson, Red Barrett, et al, agreed that baseball playing was a matter of adaptaing one's individual reflexes to the various aspects of the game. People with good reflexes permitted to develop in their own peculiar way become good baseball players; those with bad coordination spend all their days trying to master a fungo bat.

This opinion bears out this department's long-held thesis that good athletes are born and not made, although it may undermine the American Legion's baseball schemes, and wreak have with Bob Feller's royalties from "Strikeout Story."

The extra added attraction of this particular Bravea' baseball clinic was the first local appearance of John P. Mcinnis, late of the Philadelphia Athletics, the Boston Red Sex, Norwich University, and Amherst college. Stuffy Mcinnis gave the lecture on first base play.

Stuffy is a smallish gray-haired man who played first base when Eddie Collins was at second, Jack Barry at short, and Home Run Baker was on third. He learned his baseball as part of the greatest infield of an era, and from the way he talked, it second he had learned it well. As part of his talk, Mcinnis demonstrated a foolproof method of running down erring base runners with just two pegs. Nobody had ever seen it before; but this spring everybody who even sees the Sands Point Tigers play will see it.

Above all else, Stuffy Mcinnis emphasized that the secret of good defensive play is teamwork, and that the pivot of and infield is its first baseman. His part of the program was purely defensive baseball, no Mcinnis' theories on how to hit a baseball will have to wait until he holds his first Harvard practice session in March.

The part everybody wanted to hear was Earl Torgeson on "how to hit a baseball a long distance, away from the outfielders, at high speed, and with consistency." The erstwhile Earl of Snohomish had a few cardinal rules for hitters.

1. Be comfortable in the batter's box. What is comfortable for some gents is not for others, so there is no set method on this.

2. Don't copy other hitters, and especially don't copy Stanley Musial, who breaks every hitting rule in the book.

3. Don't overstride, it merely outs down on your power and adds another variable.

4. Have a level swing, and keep your eye always on the ball.

5. Don't try and baffle the pitcher by miscellaneous extra movements before he throws the ball. Most of the time it only throws your eye off.

6. Above all be relaxed; a nervous hitter is a worthless one.