Photo Finish

U.S. eyes moved back & forth like those of spectators at a tennis match. Afternoons, they focused on Brooklyn's Ebbets Field; evenings, on St. Louis' Sportsman's Park. Home and office radios blared play-by-play descriptions; earnest discussions went on at every street corner and water cooler. The Dodgers and the Cards were going down to the wire in the closest of all National League pennant races.

Pain & Joy. In Brooklyn, it was an agonizing week. On the steps of Borough Hall, the Rev. Benney S. C. Benson knelt and intoned: "Oh Lord, their chances don't look so good right now, but everyone is praying for the Bums to win. We ask you not to give . . . St. Louis any better break than you give us. . . ." That afternoon Leo ("The Lip") Durocher used eight Dodger pitchers--a league record--in an unsuccessful attempt to beat the Phillies. Next day, star Outfielder Pete Reiser broke a leg sliding into base, while 32,000 Flatbush faithfuls groaned in intense, personal pain.

In St. Louis, too, luck was running out. The Cards, in their worst batting slump of the year, scored only five runs in four games and were lucky to win two of them. Then the Chicago Cubs beat their No. 1 pitcher, Howie Pollet, and the Cards lost the last trace of their slim lead.

Joy came to Brooklyn the following afternoon. Playing like champions for once, the inspired Bums manhandled the Boston Braves. For a few happy hours, they were ahead. But that night the Cards' Harry ("The Cat") Brecheen beat the Cubs for the second time in a week. It was all tied up again, with a single game apiece to play.

The clubs opposing Brooklyn and St. Louis on the final day--Boston and Chicago--had a score of their own to settle: separated by only one game, they were fighting for third-place money.

Boston's Mort Cooper, onetime St. Louis standby, shut out the Dodgers, 4-0. Just before that Brooklyn agony was over, an incongruous cheer went up. The Ebbets Field fans, many of them armed with portable radios to keep track of enemy operations, had heard that the Cubs had scored five runs and gone ahead of the Cards. An hour later it was over: the Cards and Dodgers stood even, each with 96 won, 58 lost. This week they would start all over again, in the first two-out-of-three playoff in big-league history.

Five in Ten? The wonder was that either team was even a pennant contender. The Dodgers did not have a single 20-game-winning pitcher; the Cards had one, Howie Pollet. The Dodgers had two regular .300 hitters (Dixie Walker, Augie Galan); the Cards had three, including League-Leader Stan Musial. But when it came to managers, the Dodgers had a big edge: at getting the most out of his mediocre material, the Cards' polite little Eddie Dyer was no match for flamboyant, volatile Leo the Lip Durocher.

Whether Brooklyn wins or loses this week's playoffs, Dodger fans have a really rosy future to contemplate during the long winter months. The twelve-club farm chain collected by President Branch Rickey is busting with young talent. Most likely to succeed: Negro Jackie Robinson.

Said Leo Durocher last spring (when his 1946 Bums were scarcely reckoned as contenders): "After this year, Brooklyn will win five of the next ten pennants." For the aging Cards, winners in '42, '43 and '44 and runners-up last year, 1946 might be the last season of glory for a while. * * *

This weekend, the playoff winner will go up against an even tougher customer: Boston's potent Red Sox, runaway winners of the American League race.

When Tom Yawkey bought the Sox in 1933, they were confirmed cellar dwellers. He knew that even his inherited millions would not buy a pennant in "a day, a month or even a season," and he was right. He spent millions buying up past-their-prime stars (Connie Mack's Jimmy Foxx and Lefty Grove, among others), got Boston nothing better than four seconds ('38, '39, '41 , '42). Yawkey got to be known as baseball's silliest spender.

Talent & Tone. Tom Yawkey eventually found the formula for success: a farm system, bossed by an astute judge of talent. Yawkey's man is General Manager Eddie Collins, who picked up Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr and Dom Di Maggio when they were still youngsters on the Pacific Coast.

Boston farm clubs sent up Pitchers Dave Ferriss, Tex Hughson and Mickey Harris, who between them won 62 games this year; also Shortstop Johnny Pesky, a .334 hitter, who is half of the best second-short combination in baseball (the other half: Bobby Doerr, a .274 hitter). As for Boston's future, the supply of talent was apparent in the record of its nine farm clubs: three won pennants this year, three others finished second.

Unbeatable on paper, the heavily favored Red Sox will go into the World Series with only one real weakness, and that will have no bearing on the outcome. All season Owner Yawkey, Manager Joe Cronin and their moody star, Ted Williams, have pitched a hotsy-totsy tone for the club -- play ball, and ignore the public.

Last week Williams, in his ghost-written Boston Globe column, threw the fans a little bone. He said that he wanted his bat back, the one that he gave Detroit's Hank Greenberg a month ago. Since then Hank has been on a home-run bender. With 19 in the last 37 days of the season, he ran his total to 44 and stole Williams' league-leadership thunder in both that department and in runs-batted-in.

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