Swing, Swanged, Swunged

New York Yankee fans were coping this week with a brand-new vernacular. In a pre-game TV interview with Manager Casey Stengel, big, ham-handed Dizzy Dean boomed: "You ain't a-woofin' about that, brother!" The fans also noted, for future reference, that the Arkansas-born announcer conjugates the verb to swing as swing, swanged, swunged.

Grey-haired and 45 lbs. heavier than he was when he was pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals in the '30s 39-year-old Jay Hanna Dean is no radio & TV novice. His broadcasts of St. Louis ball games during the past nine years have put him in a position to spend each winter "huntin', fishin', and doin' nothin'." But his new job with the Yankees, over Du Mont's New York television station WABD, marks the first time he has had to handle commercials (Ballantine beer and Philip Morris cigarettes). "Some words are pretty doggone hard--if I cain't pronounce them, I'll skip 'em," says Dean. "After all, as the fella said, I only went to the second grade." Helping him over the rough spots and big words is short, chipper Jack Farrell of the Yankees' publicity staff, who boasts that "I didn't get far beyond the second grade myself."

Dizzy's salary back in 1933, when he won 20 games for the Cardinals, was $3,000. For his corn-pone idiom and homespun description of doings at the Yankee Stadium this summer he will get $30,000. "Which is more than I ever made pitchin' baseballs," he says thoughtfully.

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