New Look in Brooklyn

By this week the Brooklyn Dodgers were beginning to make the other entries in the National League pennant race look like a bunch of platers chasing Man o' War. It was no longer a question of who would win the race, according to happy Dodger supporters, it was now just a matter of the Dodgers' winning margin. Even Brooklyn Manager Charley Dressen, after watching his team win its sixth straight and stretch its early-season lead to 6 1/2 games, abandoned the manager's traditional attitude of dour dismay to admit: "The team that beats us can win the pennant--but nobody is going to beat us."

Chipper Charley Dressen, a bustling, 52-year-old veteran who salts his peppery chatter with baseball's four-letter Anglo-Saxon, has some sound reasons for his optimism. He has an infield which matches or betters any in either league, both in fielding and hitting, a stable of booming hitters (see box) and, in Roy Campanella, the best catcher in baseball. Though his pitching staff is a little short of reliable starters, it is long on reliefers, especially when handled by Dressen's particular brand of managerial magic--a shrewd combination of coaxing and coercion.

Win or Bust. Bouncing up & down the third-base coaching line, Dressen unfurls a series of antic semaphore signs, punctuated by shrill whistles, designed to befuddle opponents and give Dodger hitters and runners the benefit of his 31 years' experience as player (third base with Cincinnati), coach and manager. Unlike self-effacing ex-Manager Burt Shotton, he is no dugout sphinx. If some second-guessing fan questions his strategy, he is likely to switch his attentions to the crowd.

Last week Dressen yapped a little too loudly at the umpire, was tossed out of the game (for the second time this season). Then he turned up in street clothes in a box alongside the bench, from where he could still direct the show, was chased again. Next, he turned up in the dugout disguised as an Ebbets Field groundkeeper. Chased for the third time, he was fined $100 for disobeying the umpire, happily paid it: he had impressed his win-or-bust ballplayers.

The Tight Ones. As the third-base traffic manager, Dressen is ordinarily kept busy enough just waving the slugging Dodgers on to home plate. But last week, against the second-place St. Louis Cardinals, he showed that he also knows how to win the tight ones.

In the first game the Cards outhit the Dodgers, 9 to 6, but Dressen juggled three pitchers astutely enough to get a 3-2 victory on Roy Campanella's double in the ninth. The Cards outhit the Dodgers in the second game too, but Dressen helped to ease Pitcher Ralph Branca through the bad spots, and Campanella's home run again won for the Dodgers, 3 to 2. In the final game the Cardinals belted unbeaten Preacher Roe for nine hits while the Dodgers were getting five, but Brooklyn again won, 2 t01, on a ninthinning, bases-loaded single by Outfielder Carl Furillo. It was Brooklyn's 13th one-run victory of the season.

When to Relax. Such clutch hitting and pitching makes Dressen's managing job seem easy. He claims it is: "Hell, they manage themselves." But Charley Dressen had added something to make a runaway leader out of a team that (under Burt Shotton) floundered along behind Philadelphia most of last season, then lost the pennant on the final day by failing when the chips were down.

The difference, Dressen thinks, is mostly in his own attitude. "I'm with them, and they're more relaxed. I never put a player in the doghouse. I don't care if they go out at night and have a drink. Training for baseball is not like training for a fight, where it's all over in 30 minutes. The boys have to relax once in a while." But, adds Dressen, "when they make a mistake, I fine 'em--and they get over it quick."

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