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Show TT IS becoming evident that the Yankees o 1940 are not going to do as much league wrecking this season as they did the last tour years. In the first place Joe DiMaggio may be a doubtful quantity for some time to come. And Joe DiMaggio means more to the Yankees than one might t j Grantland Rice imagine, when you I remove a .385 hitter, hit-ter, one of the leading lead-ing home-runpunch-ers and one of the best of all defensive outfielders, you are losing something no team can afford to lose not even the Yankees. The odds are that DiMaggio will be as good as ever In a short while, but he will still be a gam ble. A wounded knee is always a gamble. Ask any good trainer. 1 Another Angle Here is another angle one of the rival managers gave out recently. "For the last four years," he said, "most of us have taken it for granted that the Yankees couldn't be stopped. They were just too good. Partly for this reason too many of our teams were beaten before a Yankee game started. But yon get tired of taking too many beatings. They begin to leave a deeper sting. This season you'll find most of the teams out to beat the Yankees, hustling hus-tling harder than they ever have before. be-fore. "This can make a lot of difference. differ-ence. Especially as the Yankees, after four big years, won't have the same Keenness, iney can t nave. It isn't human nature. "I remember hearing Ty Cobb say once that three or four years of success wag about all any ball club can carry. This doesn't mean the Yankees can't win again. But it does mean we should have a real race this season." Spirit and the Dodgers This matter of team spirit brings us alongside the Dodgers. I asked Larry MacPhail how he accounted for that wild and woolly getaway the Dodgers put on this season. "Hustling and spirit," Larry said. "I honestly think we have 25 per cent more spirit than any team in baseball. "We haven't a great team as far as playing personnel goes. But we haUA n hnstlinff manager and a hustling hus-tling bunch of fellows fel-lows who keep on . their toes from start to finish. "As you know from the old days at Camp Sevier in Greenville," Larry continued, "I've been around quite a while looking things over. (Officer MacPhail Mac-Phail arnund 1917 Larry MacPhail I and early 1918, was stationed In the next snow-covered lot with Colonel Luke Lea's 113th. F. A. And he happens to be one of Colonel Lea's crack officers, willing to try anything, any-thing, including a Kaiser kidnaping.) kidnap-ing.) "Yes, I've been around quite a while," Larry continued. "But I haven't seen any better spirit in either baseball or football than Brooklyn has this year. We have a great city back of us, one of the greatest baseball cities in the history his-tory of the game. When you can draw more than a million people with a team trying to finish third, and just making it, you can understand un-derstand the type of fans we have on our side. Don't forget that means a lot. Tops in Team Spirit "if we have 25 per cent more spirit than any other team carries--and I think we have the average Brooklyn fan has 40 per cent more spirit than any other fan. He may turn against us a little if we start flopping, but why shouldn't he? The main business of a big league ball club is to win ball games. But if we give him a chance no other fan can rally as quickly. This season we put out $140,000 for talent. We lose $110,000 from the weather, $110,000 we needed badly. Try to match that break." The two best baseball cities in the country are Brooklyn and Detroit. They win going away. They know baseball, and they love baseball. They are well ahead of New York and Chioago, wUose "topless towers," tow-ers," surrounded by nearly 15,000,-000 15,000,-000 people, are overshadowed. They want winners, but more Important still, they love and know the game. In this respect they have taken the play away from Boston, the real cradle of baseball knowledge and interest in-terest some years ago. There was a time when Boston was the main baseball Citadel of Swat. Boston is still a great baseball city. But it isn't a Brooklyn or a Detroit. In a four-month tour of some 10,000 miles through winter and spring I've found that about 70 per cent of the outsiders are pulling for Brooklyn to win the National League pennant and for Boston to fly the American League pennant at the Red' Sox rampart. |