OCR Text |
Show Speaking of Sports i Dodgers' Rise Baffling, But Not to Them By ROBERT McSHANE (Released by Western Newspaper Union. TUROCHER'S Dynamic Dodgers are the hottest thing in baseball base-ball today. Not long ago the Brooklyn representatives repre-sentatives of the National league were chosen to battle it out for a poor position in the second division. Today they are the surprise team of baseball. No one concedes them the pennant, but neither does any so-called expert gaze Into the crystal crys-tal ball and venture out on the well-known well-known limb by tagging them as tail-enders. tail-enders. The rise of the Dodgers can't be construed merely as a local development. devel-opment. Fans far from the banks of the Gowanus canal, bordering Eb-bets Eb-bets field, are rooting for the former Dafflness Boys. If the home team can't win, John Q. Public is all for the Dodgers. They have the people's peo-ple's vote. Just a few years ago the Dodgers were always good for a laugh. Their brand of baseball wasn't guaranteed, guaran-teed, but their style of entertainment entertain-ment was sure fire. Uncle Wilbert Robinson was at the helm, and it was an uneventful game when one base runner didn't overtake another or when an outfielder wasn't put out of action for a few innings by a fly ball. Rapid Change Artists All those things are of the past. Today the Dodgers play a fast, heads-up brand of -smir ball. Boss Larry f ff ""j MacPhail is one of jm , the best showmen I 1 in the business and j -Us Manager Lippy Leo M-Durocher M-Durocher is as con- j 11 fident and smart as t , any manager right- I I fully can be. But there's one - M big reason why the IJJ XJ Dodgers are a pennant pen-nant threat. They Larry ., have all the fire and MacPhail spirit of a college fraternity team with 10,000 spectators. Their upsurge up-surge began when MacPhail, base-baU's base-baU's big idea man, took charge before be-fore the 1938 season. He was responsible re-sponsible for the purchase of play- ers. uurocner airecieu uicm. evidence of widespread houseclean-ing houseclean-ing activities, there are only nine players still on hand from the questionable ques-tionable squad he inherited. The veterans on hand are Pitchers Fred Fitzsimmons, Van Lingle Mungo, Luke Hamlin and Forrest Pressnell, Catcher Babe Phelps, Infielders Durocher, Du-rocher, Pete Coscarart, John Hudson Hud-son and Harry Lavagetto. Starting in 1938 MacPhail purchased pur-chased First Baseman Dolph Camil-li Camil-li for $45,000. Whitlow VfVatt, Milwaukee Mil-waukee moundsman, wi. acquired next, followed by Pitchers Hugh Casey Ca-sey from Memphis and Bill Crouch from Nashville. Pitcher Vito Tamu-lis Tamu-lis came from the Browns and Outfielder Out-fielder Ernest Koy from the Yankees via waivers. Buddy Hassett and Jimmy Outlaw fc-ent to Boston for Outfielder Gene Moore and Pitcher Ira Hutchinson. He Pays to Conquer In 1939 MacPhail bought Outfielders Outfield-ers Jim Ripple from the Giants and Fred Walker from Detroit, and traded trad-ed Pitcher Bill Posedel to Boston for Backstop Al Todd. Since last year MacPhail has outdone out-done himself. He paid Louisville $45,000 and several players for Shortstop Short-stop Hal Reese. Roy Cullenbine was given $25,000 to sign, and the Red j -g nnn fnr Outfielder Sox reautcu w,v Joe Vosmik. Other additions included includ-ed Pitchers Carl Doyle from Memphis, Mem-phis, Max Macon from the Cardinals and Jim Carleton from Milwaukee. Be also acquired Wes Ferrell, Newell New-ell Kimball, Gus Mancuso, Charles Gilbert and Herman Franks. Neither MacPhail nor Durocher show any surprise over their team's early season standing. They have an airtight infield and a brand new outfield. The catching is good, and the pitching better than they expected. ex-pected. That adds up to improvement improve-ment in anybody's league. And Brooklyn, probably the best baseball town in the nation, is sold on this year's team. Just remember remem-ber that some 30,000 turned out on a rainy, miserable afternoon for the ooening game. Chances are that you don t remember re-member it, but Brooklyn won the National league pennant back in 1920, a year they won 93 games and lost 61. Flatbush fans are looking orward to a repetition of that victory vic-tory If comes, the residents of New York. Connecticut, New Jersey anT adjacent points would do well to take a coastline cruise during the fall months. Sport Shorts George Hildcbrand, former American Amer-ican league umpire, is generally "edit dlith inadvertently discovering discov-ering the spitball while playing out Lid for Uie Providence team m 1902 Ted Williams of the Boston Red qnV has a good remedy for temporary tempo-rary batting slumps. Whenever he has a hltless afternoon he imposes . f hatting practice on two hours of batting p Rrer Cubs'" fl baseman base-man is - expert whistler. |