How to Win Friends

Psychiatrists call it "masochistic identification." What that means, in plain, simple English, is love those Mets, hate those Yankees. The Yanks have won eight pennantsin the last nine years, and things are so bad that they are giving away free tickets. The Mets, who have been playing in the National League for three years and haven't found the cellar steps yet, are packing them into Shea Stadium at the rate of 765,162 fans in their first 29 home dates, second only to the world-champion Los Angeles Dodgers.

But the Yanks are wising up. They have Yogi Berra as their manager now; he starts sentences with "I may not be much of a manager, but . . ." They have a .189 hitter in the starting lineup (not even the Mets can match that), and they have a bullpen full of people who are reasonably skilled in the difficult art of throwing gopher balls. It is a slow process, but the Yankees are learning how to lose. So far this season, they have already dropped six out of ten to the sixth-place Boston Red Sox, three out of seven to the last-place Kansas City Athletics--one by the score of 11-0.

"It Was Incredible." Of course they couldn't help themselves in Chicago last week--where they won four straight and ran their season's record against Al Lopez' White Sox to 10-0. But most of those ten games were close; four were decided by one run, three went into extra innings. And Berra certainly did his bit: in the last game, when the Yankees built up a 6-2 lead after eight innings, he shipped Starting Pitcher Steve Hamilton off to the showers and sent in Reliever Hal Reniff. Even that was not quite enough: the White Sox loaded the bases right off, but none of the last three Chicago batters could even get the ball out of the infield, and the Yankees still won 6-5. "It was incredible," said Manager Berra.

That last victory put the Yankees in first place for the first time all season, and off they went to Baltimore, their new image in dire jeopardy. Baltimore Manager Hank Bauer had predicted that New York would win the pennant, said that his Orioles could not possibly finish better than third. But in the first game, trailing 7-2 with two out in the eighth inning, the Orioles were treated to seven hits and seven runs by the accommodating Yanks. Final score: Baltimore 9, New York 8. "You can't win 'em all," sighed Berra happily.

Next day was even better. Whitey Ford started for New York, and he naturally found it hardest to lose--in eleven decisions, he had made the plunge only once. This time he did the next best thing: he retired after two innings, with the game tied 4-4. That left it up to Relief Pitcher Stan Williams, whose special talent is that he does not know how to field a bunt. In the eighth inning, he picked up a trickier--and threw the ball into left field. Then, he picked up another--and threw it into right field. Final score: Baltimore 7, New York 4. Said Berra: "It ain't time to worry yet. I mean, it isn't time to worry yet."

Tootling on the Dugout. Why worry? Why, indeed, when Steve Barber was pitching next day for the Orioles? Even last year, when the Yankees won the pennant by 101 games, Barber beat them three times. Baltimore's biggest crowd of the season--36,369 strong--showed up for the occasion, and a jazz band kept things alive by tootling gaily from the top of the Yankee dugout. Pretty girls danced in the aisles, and Mickey Mantle sounded the only sour note when he complained that a fan in the bleachers was popping flashbulbs at him each time he swung (he struck out twice). The Orioles made short work of the game: Boog Powell homered in the first, and Brooks Robinson came along in the second to startle the somnolent Yankee bullpen with a blow that soared well over Hector Lopez's dejected wrist. After that, the final 3-1 victory was a breeze. Next night, against Detroit, the Yanks made four errors (three of them in the space of two innings), left 14 men stranded on the bases, and lost gloriously, 1-0, in eleven innings.

That was more like it: the Yanks had fallen back to second, 31 games behind the Orioles. But they still have a lot of losing to do before they can win New York's heart away from the Mets. By last week the Mets had dropped 14 out of their last 16 games, and what's more, they had suffered the kind of final, superlative indignity to which the Yanks, at their most ingenious, could not possibly aspire. At Shea Stadium on Father's Day, they ran into Proud Papa (of seven) Jim Bunning, a journeyman pitcher who spent nine seasons with the Detroit Tigers and now toils for the Philadelphia Phillies. Retiring 27 Mets in a row, striking out ten of them, Bunning pitched the second no-hitter of his career--and the National League's first perfect game since 1880. Now that's the way to lose.

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