Orange Curtain

The big reason why the St. Louis Cardinals are favorites* to win another National League pennant is their prize pitching staff. Even in spring training, Card pitchers seemed to have something extra up the sleeve. Exhibit A last week was slender, 155-lb. Murry Dickson, a righthander, who strode out to the mound in St. Petersburg to face the big, bad New York Yankees.

Dickson, less rugged than most pitchers, relies on a rich assortment of what baseballers call "stuff." He throws six types of pitches (fast ball, curve, slider, knuckler, sinker and screw ball). Says he: "Sometimes early in a game, some of them aren't working so well. So I drop the bad ones and stick with the ones that will do me the most good." All of them were working against the Yankees that day.

The first time Joe DiMaggio stepped to bat, Dickson says he threw three perfect strikes ("Not down the middle--not to DiMaggio, ever. But they were good"). Umpire Bill Summers called each of them a ball--then apologized to the pitcher: "I'm sorry, Dick. It's that damned background. I can't follow the ball."

Neither could the Yankee batters. The background was an orange canvas curtain draped over the wire fence in centerfield (to spoil a free view for passers-by). The ball came out of that background and was on top of the batter before he knew it. By the seventh inning, not a Yankee had collected a hit. Murry's Cardinal teammates began to treat him just as if he were pitching a no-hitter in the regular season --when it counted.

So as not to jinx him, his benchmates made a point of not looking at him or speaking to him unless he asked them a question. ("Then I'd get a quick, choppy answer.") Their efforts paid off: Murry Dickson got the first one-man spring-training no-hitter in nine years.

The orange curtain that helped Dickson camouflage his curves was not much help to Big Bill ("Hard Luck") Bevens, the Yankee pitcher. Cardinal bats pounded Bevens for seven runs before he got them out in the first inning. Then Bill, who had lost a one-hitter in last fall's World Series, walked dejectedly to the bench.

He wasn't sure that he hadn't pitched his last ball; his arm ached badly. Said Murry Dickson sympathetically: "I had a sore arm in St. Pete back in 1940. The fellows asked me to go bowling, so I went . . . suddenly I felt a pricking pain in my forearm and elbow, but I kept bowling. When I finished the game, the pain was gone. I've never had a sore arm since."

*At 8-5 in the betting. Behind them: Boston Braves (2-1), Brooklyn (3-1), New York Giants (5-1).

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