It's a Grand Weak Game

Baseball's Midsummer Night's Dream --the annual All Star game--was more like a dull nightmare. Not a single home run was scored. The American League team failed to make even a single extra-base hit. When it all finally came to an end in Pittsburgh last week, the Nationals had won by 7-to-1, the most lopsided score in the twelve-year-old series.

But baseball's impresarios, who mark success by gate receipts, were not downcast. For the fans, although they had known what to expect, had poured out some $80,000 to watch the exhibition. The 29,589 paid admissions to the All Star game were another indication that baseball, in the throes of its third wartime year, is doing much better than anyone had thought possible.

Competition Counts. So far this year, average daily attendance has been about 8.000 a game, a third higher than last year. The boom could probably be accounted for by the fact that in baseball close competition draws better than brilliant play. Talent had never been so weak and unpredictable, but neither had it ever been so evenly distributed.

This happy circumstance was no fault of management. To spur their teams into early leads, dugout bosses had grabbed up 4-F's, imported foreigners, recalled rusty old men, hired war workers on their days off, distributed daily doses of vitamins.

But by last week's mid-season recess, few of these efforts toward superiority had availed. The American League clubs, with the St. Louis Browns leading, were bunched as closely as piglets at feeding time, showing the sharpest competition in history. And below the leading St. Louis Cardinals, there was almost as much competition in the National League. One team and one player had especially good sporting value to offer in baseball's Ersatz Epoch:

P: The team: there was more space (10 1/2 games) between the St. Louis Cardinals and the runner-up Pittsburgh Pirates than there was between top and cellar positions in the American League (9 games). Largely because they had been able to keep most of last season's pennant winners, the Cards were the only team up to prewar standards.

P: The player: Mel Ott, the New York Giants' right-fielding manager, scored his 1,741st big league run on June 21, breaking the great Honus Wagner's alltime record, hung up in 1917. Ott also holds National League records in home runs (483), runs batted in (1,749), extra base hits (1,013). At a time when most veterans begin to relax, 35-year-old Ott was last week leading both leagues in home runs for the season (20).

Pennant Prospects. Only some fantastic losing streak could now keep the Cardinals from the pennant.

The American League champion is still anybody's guess, but many a fan favors the leading Browns, who have never yet won a pennant. To succeed, Manager Luke Sewell's hopefuls must hold their slim lead not only against the strongly bidding New York Yankees (who became even stronger this week with Veteran Frank Crosetti's return from a West Coast war job), but also every other club in the tightly bunched eight.

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