"Oh, Yes, the Yankees"

Said beaver-toothed Joe DiMaggio, with a grin: "Seems like it's the first time I've ever been ready for an opening game." No gimpy shoulder, no ulcer complaints, no bad heel troubled him this year: he felt good. If DiMag was ready, so were the New York Yankees. They were co-favorites--along with the Boston Red Sox--to win the American League pennant.

After six weeks of reading about every deep breath and every bad pitch their baseball heroes had taken, the fans settled down to watch the real thing. This week the season was on. Even the Red Sox's taciturn Manager Joe McCarthy (TIME, April 5) broke silence: "The Yankees? Oh, yes, the Yankees. Well, I'll tell you. I believe this Cleveland club will be up there. They've got Feller, y'know." Another team to watch was the pitcher-rich Detroit Tigers.

Most of the fawdeeraw was over in the National League, where eight clubs got set to make a race out of it, and at least six had a fighting chance. The favored St. Louis Cardinals had balance but few reserves. Cincinnati had its thin man Ewell Blackwell, the league's best pitcher. If the fence-busting New York Giants had two more good pitchers, they could take World Series orders this week. But the club other managers worried most about was the Boston Braves, which has a new doubleplay combination (Rookie Alvin Dark and Oldster Eddie Stanky) and a shrewd pilot, Billy Southworth.

The thing nobody could understand was a strange lack of hurly-burly in Brooklyn, where silent Leo (The ex-Lip) Durocher, back-room exile, was busy fitting young arms and legs (products of the Dodgers' farm system) into his batting order. A reporter asked him: "Are you going to worry every club to death, like last year?" Answered The Lip: "I wasn't here last year. Remember me?"

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