Baseball

(See front cover)

National League. The batter dug his spikes into the dust beside the plate, pulled down his cap, swung back to wait for the first pitch. It was Woody English, wiry Chicago third-baseman, coming up in the tenth with one out and the score tied. At the crack of his clean single the record crowd, spreading down over the grandstand terraces into roped-off areas along the sidelines, began to stir and shout. Kiki Cuyler lined out to Hendrick but then Hack Wilson hit safely and Taylor smacked the ball into the overflow crowd at the right, bringing in the run that won the game for the Cubs, 4-3. The big crowd went home jubilant. In a crucial series with Brooklyn, who had led the league until their final game with St. Louis early in the week, the Cubs had won three games out of four, had nipped into first place and stayed there.

The contest for league leadership has been fought between the Cubs and the Brooklyn Robins as closely as though the whole season were one game which it would take extra innings to decide. "The team that is ahead on July 4 will win the pennant" is an old baseball adage, a wiser adage being: "The team ahead on Labor Day [when there are only some 20 more games to go] is not likely to lose." This year on July 4 Brooklyn played a double-header and lost the first game, which put them behind Chicago. But Chicago was playing Pittsburgh a doubleheader, and after lunch they lost and the Robins won, so that at sunset Brooklyn was in the lead --by .002 of a point. The decisive factor was clearly what sort of playing would be done thereafter by these Robins, a gambling, reckless team of fine pitchers and erratic hitters, a team famed for last-minute spurts, for easy fellowship, popularity in its own town, and for its manager, Wilbert ("Uncle Robbie") Robinson, son of a butcher, who says: "It's the best ball team I ever managed."

Round, loquacious, genial, with big muscles, a fine anecdotal memory, a hearty appetite and a short deep scar-- in his cheek, Manager Robinson, 66, has worked at baseball every summer for 50 years. He caught for the Baltimore "Orioles" when John McGraw played for them. Once a pitched ball broke one of his fingers, left it hanging by a thread of skin.

"What did you do, Robbie?" listeners are expected to ask as he tells the story. "Aw, I bit it off and went on playing."

For a while he and McGraw ran a saloon together in Baltimore. When McGraw went to New York, Robbie followed him and helped coach the Giants. Hired by Charles Ebbets to manage Brooklyn he took with him none of the methods of domineering, arrogant Strategist McGraw, or any other manager.

The original journalese for the Brooklyn club--"Dodgers"--was founded on the popular belief that, Brooklyn being overrun with trolley cars, all its citizens, including the ballplayers, were trolley-dodgers. The team's later name of Robins is pure tribute to the manager's enveloping personality. He is recognized wherever he goes in Brooklyn and willingly discusses managerial tactics with taxi-drivers, countermen, policemen, waiters. His tone in explaining his methods with these interlocutors is sometimes apologetic. He says: "My gosh! You should hear the bawling out I get from the wife when we lose a game. . . . "

Robbie should have had fewer corrections at home this year than ever before. Not since 1920 has he won a pennant, and never a world's series. This year, consistently in the race for first place, his team is built around a fine pitching staff. Young Raymond Phelps has been doing well and aging Arthur C. ("Dazzy") Vance still has control, though he tires more quickly than he did two years ago. Shortstop Glenn Wright could not throw straight a while ago but an operation adjusted slipping muscles in his arm and he is playing better than ever.

Not a great ball-team, but certainly a surprising one, the Robins have shown amazing faculty for winning games that seem lost. On the whole it is better balanced than the Giants-- whose pitchers have not kept things safe even for such able batsmen as Memphis Bill Terry, league leader, or slugging Third Baseman Fred Lindstrom. The Cubs, pennant winners last year, have three pitchers (John Blake, Charlie Root, Pat Malone) as good as the Robins staff, and they hit as hard as the Giants. Outfielder Hack Wilson had hit 41 homeruns up to last weekend; Kiki Cuyler's average was .356. Sometimes ability seems to desert all parts of the Cub staff, but when this happens they often win on luck. They have a reputation as a team that "gets the breaks."

American League. Fox-faced, silver-haired Connie Mack's champions were so far ahead last week that barring injuries or sickness affecting half the available staff they are practically sure to win the American League pennant. In second place was Washington, in third New York.

International League. Three sturdy Rochester batsmen (Worthington, Southworth, Collins) have led the league in batting almost all season. Well supported, they have given the club a decided though not yet a safe lead over Baltimore, with Montreal and Toronto well down the list. Most notable man in the league is First-Baseman Joseph Hauser of the Baltimore Orioles--the club whence Babe Ruth rose to fame. Last week Hauser's 54th home-run put him six behind Ruth's 1927 total and eleven ahead of Ruth thus far this year, despite the fact that Ruth is ahead of his own best pace. The Chicago White Sox last week offered $50,000 and a first baseman for Hauser, but other managers were skeptical because Hauser has had numerous trials against big-league pitching. Before retiring to the Orioles, he played with the Senators, the Athletics, the Indians.

American Association. Louisville's right fielding and adequate pitching has sapped the ambitions of slugging opponents and made its own batting sallies count double. Toledo and St. Paul have been running close for second place; Minneapolis, Kansas City (Little World Series Winners), and Columbus have slipped steadily further behind; in the cellar are Indianapolis, Milwaukee.

Pacific Coast League. Since early season there has not been much chance of Los Angeles catching the Hollywood Stars. San Francisco or Missions might still take second place. Seattle, loudly touted in May, trails miserably.

Southern Association. Memphis has first place safe. Deadlocked for second are Birmingham, New Orleans and the Atlanta team for which Golfer Bobby Jones, vice president of the club, sometimes opens the season by driving brassie shots from the home plate out of the lot.

*Whence this scar, he will not tell, except to say he did not get it playing baseball.

*Last week, William F. Kenny, originator of the grooved brick idea, great & good friend of Alfred Emanuel Smith, sold his 20% interest in the New York Giants to J. Harry McNally, once a bricklayer. McNally hinted he would soon control the club, was contradicted by President Charles A. Stoneham.

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