TNT & Trumps

The experts, as usual, disagreed. American League partisans picked the tired Tigers, but admitted that it would probably take six games for Hank Greenberg's big bat and Detroit's better balanced pitching staff to do the job. National Leaguers, viewing the 1945 World Series in the same fuzzy light, stoutly insisted that it was a six-game set-up for the younger, faster Chicago Cubs. It seemed more likely that since both clubs had barely squeaked into the series, they would have to play out the full string of seven before either one could win four.

As it turned out, the players themselves --many of them fugitives from the minor leagues--showed neither ability nor ambition to finish it off in a hurry. They made bush-league mistakes in the field (in a single game three pop flies were allowed to fall for safe hits), swooned in the face of first-rate pitching, and did nothing more invigorating than tilt their eyebrows at umpires' decisions.

For the customers who jampacked Detroit's Briggs Stadium and Chicago's Wrigley Field (at a $7.20 top), it was a strictly second-rate show. But the people kept coming, and the total take reached an alltime high of $1,328,777. The players' pool promised a juicy cut for both winners & losers.

Bran Flakes & Kisses. The temperature was a chilly 46DEG when the Tigers and Cubs squared off for their big tea party last week. What followed was enough to give any big-league manager chills & fever. No exceptions were Chicago's banjo-strumming Charlie ("Jolly Cholly") Grimm and Detroit's pug-nosed Irishman, Steve O'Neill. And what went for them went for their wives: plump, chestnut-haired Lillian Lyle Grimm and dark, buxom Mary Boland O'Neill.

Jolly Cholly, an extrovert who exudes cheer and carries a banner of hilarity, inwardly is one of baseball's greatest worriers, a man who doesn't sleep well when things go bad. He slept fine after the first game. Solid Steve O'Neill, who does his worrying on the ball field and leaves it there, just waddled home to the Detroit-Leland Hotel and settled silently behind cigar smoke to read the horrible headlines. Sample (from the Detroit Free Press): "Tigers Wail, oo o o O O O Oh."

Steve's pride & joy, Pitcher Hal Newhouser, was blasted out in the third inning. The old bones in his outfield, average age 34, creaked and groaned. Greenberg & Co. looked silly against Hank Borowy's careful pitching. Score: Chicago 9, Detroit 0.

After the second game Mary O'Neill heard her man hum a few snatches: "All I can promise is a cozy little cottage. . . ." As usual, win or lose, Steve had bran flakes with peaches for dinner. But Grimm had a trump to play. For ten days he had rested Claude Passeau's ancient and ailing arm. After the third game, Lillian Grimm's floor-pacer passed a restful night.

Against Passeau's sinkers and sliders, nary a Tiger reached second base. For the first time in 39 years, the World Series had a one-hitter. Score: Chicago 3, Detroit 0.

By the time the ball clubs reached Chicago for the fourth game, a bumper crop of 400 flip-flopping newsmen had made the Cubs 11-to-5 favorites again. Grimm's frisky Cubs seemed to have more life than the lifeless Tigers--even on the bench. Jolly Cholly got kissed by Actress June Haver, and was told by Mrs. Grimm not to come home without a victory. But Steve O'Neill had been busy brewing a batch of pitching TNT--Trout, Newhouser, Trucks.

Paul ("Dizzy") Trout, well rested, calmly polished his glasses after nearly every pitch, and polished off the Cubs with five hits. Score: Detroit 4, Chicago 1.

Steve O'Neill, more confident than ever about his TNT, could go to Sunday Mass with no worldly intent to take an extra tug at his beads--in supplication for so mundane a thing as a World Series victory. Once again the Tigers were favorites, and Jolly Cholly slept poorly, knowing that Hal Newhouser would be throwing them in against his club.

Though Newhouser's Tiger-mates lost balls in the sun and threw late to the wrong bases, Lefty Hal never wavered. Big Hank belted three two-baggers. Score: Detroit 8, Chicago 4.

The Tigers now led for the first time, three games to two. In two previous series, 1934's and 1940's, they had got that far and foozled. With Fireballer Trucks on tap, Steve (& Mary) O'Neill were sitting pretty. Charlie (& Lillian) Grimm had no choice but to come back with his trump after only two days' rest.

Trucks lasted four innings, was followed by four Tiger pitchers. Big Hank's second homer of the series evened the score in the eighth inning. Passeau lasted six, Wyse one; Borowy was the fourth Cub hurler, and the winner--after 28 hits and five errors in twelve innings, the longest World Series game on record (3 hrs. 28 min) Score: Chicago 8, Detroit 7.

Said Grimm: "Let me take my store teeth out so I can talk louder. . . . It's wonderful . . . just wonderful!''

For the two teams that had just managed to squeak into 1945's Series, there was just one last squeak left.

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