Play Ball

First, somebody forgot to assign a man to raise the U.S. flag at Ebbets Field (an improvement over 1913, when the Dodgers couldn't even find a flag). Then, in a fit of haste, the Brooklyns ran their World Championship emblem up the pole above the Stars & Stripes.

Otherwise, the 1956 big-league baseball season got off to a hot start last week in cold, dank weather. There were rookies in almost every lineup, but it was the big-name pros who provided the heat. Philadelphia's Robin Roberts, hoping to win 20 games for the seventh straight year, pitched a typical Robertsian game, was slammed for nine hits, five for extra bases, yet beat the Dodgers 8-6. The Giants' Willie Mays performed some run-scoring aggression at home plate (see cut), personally accounted for the winning run over Pittsburgh, did the same the following day. The Cardinals' Stan Musial hit a home run to beat Cincinnati. The Yankees' Mickey Mantle walloped two out-of-the-park homers to help lick Washington (and added two more homers by week's end). And the Red Sox's Ted Williams expertly dumped three hits into left field against the right-side "Williams shift" to pace the Sox to victory over Baltimore.

Confusion, though, followed the Dodgers. Partly as a gesture to jolt New York State taxpayers into helping them to build a new stadium, they crossed the Hudson to Jersey City for a second "opening game," the first of seven regular-season "home" games they will play there this year. Somebody gave Jersey City Mayor Bernard J. Berry a ball to throw out. Came time for the historic throw. "Mr. Mayor, the ball," an aide prompted. "The ball?" echoed His Honor with surprise. "I gave it to some kid." The game itself, complicated by the poor playing surface in Roosevelt Stadium, was a literal comedy of errors (eight of them, five by the Dodgers), and Philadelphia Third Baseman Willie Jones somehow managed to spike himself while running under a pop fly.

But by week's end the world champions had settled down with the rest of the teams for the 154-game grind, and the sportswriters had dutifully filed their predictions. The overwhelming consensus: the Yankees and the Dodgers again.

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