Quaker Uprising

Last weekend the Philadelphia Phillies came home to Shibe Park after a seven-day road trip. In the first of a four-game series with Brooklyn, they gave the Dodgers the bum's rush, 8-to-2. They lost the second game on a seventh-inning homer, 3-to 2. The Sunday doubleheader, played in steam-kettle heat, was all Brooklyn, 9-to-4, 6-to-0. But townsfolk fought shin and elbow to welcome the Phillies home.

Philadelphia fans, who have set a record for staying away from their home park in large numbers, now have good reason to want to flock inside. For the first time in ten years the Phillies are a solid first-division threat. After last Sunday's doubleheader, they were in fifth place in the National League standings, but only eight games behind the world champion Cardinals, two behind the third-place Pirates. They may still slide ignominiously back into Philly corner, at the bottom of the league. But Philadelphians are making the most of today. Some fans have already sent in their checks for World Series tickets.

The Bargain Counter. The man responsible for the Quaker uprising is bustling, chronically cheerful William Drought Cox, a 33-year-old Manhattan lumber broker, who bought the Philadelphia franchise last winter at a forced-sale bargain price (reportedly $40,000 down and notes for $200,000 of back debts).

Cox's youthful enthusiasms have run helter-skelter since he left Yale in 1929. First, deciding to dabble in politics, he published a pamphlet called The Standard Political Handbook, sold it to the Sun Oil Co. for a filling-station handout. Ten years ago he bought the rights to the New York Sun's famed Christmas editorial, "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus," gets a royalty each time it is reprinted. When his lumber deals began to pile up a neat fortune, he bought a bankrupt professional football club, the New York Yankees, which shuddered a bit, then died all over. But his dream since boyhood was a big-league baseball club.

When the dream finally came true, rival club-owners rubbed their palms. Here was a rich and unwary newcomer on whom they could unload some of baseball's expensive gold bricks. They had done it when Millionaire William Wrigley Jr. bought the Cubs, when Millionaire Tom Yawkey bought the Red Sox.

The Boy Wonder. But Lumberman Cox was no babe in the woods. He was smart enough to listen to the manager he had hired: the onetime Boy Wonder, Stanley ("Bucky") Harris, who has learned plenty in the 19 years since he led the Washington Senators to a world championship at the age of 27.

In recent years, Harris had been handicapped by front-office interference. With the Boston Red Sox he was under the watchful eye of one of the smartest men in baseball, immortal Second Baseman Eddie Collins, who had been hired by Boss Yawkey to oversee his team of expensive prima donnas. Back with the Senators, after one season at Boston, Harris had to cope with aging Owner Clark Griffith, the Old Fox, who expected him still to be the Boy Wonder with Cuban semi-pros and Class-D bushers.

Base Hits, Not Glitter. With the Phillies, Bucky Harris was given free rein and he made the most of it. He steered Cox away from glittering names, helped him make shrewd deals. In the face of a player shortage that has prevented older and wiser owners from landing much-needed players, Cox got five new faces for his starting lineup -- none of whom cost the club more than the major-league waiver price of $7,500.

He got Jimmy Wasdell from the Pirates, Babe Dahlgren from the Dodgers. Dahlgren is now leading both leagues with a batting average of .351 ; Wasdell is hitting around .300. But the clinching stroke that has given the Phillies a winning combination was trading Outfielders Earl Naylor and Danny Litwhiler (Litwhiler was considered their best outfielder) for three Cardinal castoffs: Coaker Triplett, Buster Adams and Dain Clay (later swapped for Cincinnati Shortstop Charlie Brewster).

With these hustlers in the lineup, Cox's collection of castoffs won eight of their next ten games. They did astonishing things, such as scoring nine runs in one inning to snatch a game from the high & mighty Dodgers; then, just to prove that it was no fluke, scored ten runs in one inning two days later to trounce the Boston Braves.

The Phillies are not a great ball club, perhaps not even a good one, according to peacetime standards. But Manager Harris is working wonders with the material at hand. No martinet, like the Pirates' Frankie Frisch or the Dodgers' Leo Durocher, he gives his players plenty of rope, never rides them, never drives them, plays no favorites.

The Empty Bullpen. To instill confidence in his young pitchers, he keeps his bullpen empty, sends a relief man down only when the situation is critical. This policy is clicking with has-beens like Schoolboy Rowe and Si Johnson, as well as the green youngsters for whom it was intended. Rowe has already won six games ; Johnson, seven.

While Harris worked on the Philly players, Owner Cox took pains to build up the morale of the Philly fans. He bought newspaper space for heart-to-heart talks with them, bought radio time for the broadcasting of team gossip. During games he has the current batting averages of each player posted on the Scoreboard. For future customers, he has started the publication of a sports weekly called The Scoreboard, to be distributed free (through relatives and friends) to members of the armed forces.

So far, Cox's approach to the angleshooting game of club ownership is paying dividends. The box office reports that in 28 home games this year the Phillies have drawn 253,000 fans to Shibe Park -- 61,000 more than the total for all 74 home games last year.

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