Yankees v. Whom?

Neither the War nor the Gas Curfew is something to look forward to, but for baseball fans the looming World Series is. To every fan, it was last week apparent, on Aug. 1, that the American League pennant was already in the bag. The smooth, smart, smitey New York Yankees, with a Murderers' Row comparable to that of Babe Ruth's day, had won 45 of their last 50 games, were twelve games ahead of the second-place Indians. Even jut-jawed Joe McCarthy, most modest manager in the business, admitted that nothing but a catastrophe could stop his Yankees from bagging their fifth pennant in six years.

But what about the National League? Residents of Manhattan last week swore that they could hear agonized screams and groans clear across the East River the day the Brooklyn Dodgers lost a crucial game to the St. Louis Cardinals. Only a fortnight before, the unpredictable Dodgers were leading the league (four full games in front of the Cards), and Brooklyn bigwigs argued noisily whether to use their own Ebbets Field (which seats only 34,000) or hire Manhattan's Polo Grounds (seating 54,000) for the World Series. Then the St. Louis Cardinals bustled into Brooklyn.

Lippy's Boys. There is something about the Cardinals that makes the Dodgers see red. Perhaps it is the fact that several dwindling Dodger stars (including Manager Lippy Durocher) are former members of the St. Louis chain gang, sold down the river. Perhaps it irks them to see up-&-coming ballplayers, fresh from the Cardinal farms, doing as good a job as they did in their prime. At any rate, the Dodgers behaved like embarrassed has-beens. The Cards moidered them in two straight games in their own ball park.

That started a Dodger slump: they lost seven of their next ten games. Whitlow Wyatt, their best pitcher (when he strolls to the mound, some Dodger fan usually screams: "T'row it down d'eir t'roats, Whitelaw!"), lost three games in a row. Rookie Pete Reiser, who was leading the league in hitting, suddenly found it hard to connect. While Lippy's boys were losing nine out of twelve games, the Cardinals won nine out of twelve. Last week, St. Louis was on top by two full games. It looked like a dogfight for the month of August.

Billy's Kids. The Cardinals may lack the smoothness of the Yankees and the fiery leadership of the Dodgers, but they are a scrappy, slugging team. Critics say the Cards might have been the Yankees of the National League, if money-minded General Manager Branch Rickey, founder of the farm system, had not sold so many ($4,000,000 worth) of their promising farm products. Still, St. Louis has nothing to mope about. Manager Billy Southworth, a paternal oldtimer with infectious enthusiasm, has a green thumb for ripening green players. This year's Cardinals have six regulars batting over .300; Creepy Crespi, a rookie second-baseman who has made the infield click; Ernie White, a 24-year-old South Carolina southpaw who, in his first year with the Big Team, has won twelve games--three of them on three successive days.

"You can bet your pay check that the Yanks and Cards will meet in the 1941 World Series," drawled Loudspeaker Dizzy Dean, onetime trump Card, recently released from the Chicago Cubs to broadcast St. Louis ball games. But lippy Brooklyn fans gave Ole Diz a loud razzberry. And some farsighted fans thought they saw the surging Cincinnati Reds and the swashbuckling Pittsburgh Pirates--nine and ten games off the pace--looming up to make a four-way fight of it.

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