Diz on Diz

gillette, n. Fast pitch near batter's whiskers.

cockeye, n. Left-handed pitcher.

union hours, n. coll. Nine-inning game.

zebra, n. Fast outfielder.

After two years of hurling such dusters at his St. Louis radio audience of 1,000,000, Jerome Herman Dean has explained all-- in The Dizzy Dean Dictionary and What's What in Baseball. His sponsor, St. Louis' Falstaff Brewery, planted the idea; an adman wrote the book. Despite this hybridism, the result is pure Dean, so pure that Diz threatens to "write another soon." Meanwhile Opus No. 1 has gone through 25,000 copies in ten days.

"I've wrote this thing because I wanta clear up a lot of misunderstandings people have about baseball . . ." he explains in a "forward." Two prime misunderstandings:

--A Cardinal scout signed Dean as a cockeye after watching him pitch rocks at squirrels. Dizzy patiently explains: "I throw so hard with my right arm that I squash up them squirrels somethin' turrible and they ain't fit eatin'. . . . When I'm out rustlin' up our grub ... I got to throw left-handed."

--Diz averaged 20 wins a year in five and a half seasons until a line drive in the 1937 All-Star game broke his toe. Diz rested for a fortnight, then tried out a new delivery that favored the bad foot. "There was a loud crack in my shoulder, and my arm went numb down to my fingers. . . . Ol' Diz's great arm was never goin' to be the same. . . ."

That's how an author was born.

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