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Show PI?! tat MCE Ji':mA ' I HE Cincinnati Reds are obsti-- obsti-- nate fellows and refused to believe be-lieve what they were told, especially about themselves. When they met the Yankees last ; '"";I4 fall and bounced ,y 4 off, bruised all over, M they were told that I; :.: they were clowns 0fe f??. ' anc 'nat Ernie Lom-f'i,' Lom-f'i,' ' ' bardi, who wound , up in the dirt at the plate, was the big- , - "i est clown of all. ', f ; This spring they ' t ' were told that teams LJtir ij's3sita s0 humiliated in a World series do not Grantland Rice come back and that they were due to give way to either the Dodgers or the Cardinals. But here they are with another series under their belt. I asked Bill McKechnie if he had any trouble bringing the Reds back from the big crash. "None at all," he said. "They knew just how bad they looked but instead of being depressed about it, they simply were fighting mad." "And Lombardi?" "He brushed the series off," Bill said. "I've never heard him refer to it except lightly and I know he didn't do any brooding about it." This Team Came Back A game crew, the Reds believed m nobody but themselves and so escaped es-caped the fate of other clubs that had been run over by the rolling Yankees. No other club beaten in four straight games by the Yankees, ever came back to win the following I V 1 1 fcV M f BILL McKECHNIE year and that was more than a coincidence. co-incidence. The morale of the victims vic-tims had been shattered by the defeat de-feat and the criticism and abuse that followed it. McKechnie himself was a victim of one of those debacles, losing his job when the Cardinals cracked in 1929 after the Yankees had flattened them in the fall of '28. But this time he had a stronger fibered bunch and they hammered back from the ragged edge of ruin. The Big Three Barring that one slump early in August, when Lombardi and Gene Thompson were out with injuries and the whole team rocked under the tragic fate of Hershberger, the Reds have given such a smooth performance that it is difficult to pick out this man or that and say that if it hadn't been for him, they wouldn't have rushed to another flag. But I'll cite three men without whom the Reds would have had much harder going: Lombardi, Joe Beggs and Bill Werber. Bcggs' case illustrates once more that a capable relief pitcher is indispensable in-dispensable in modern baseball. Those Eighteen Games McKechnie credits Beggs with saving at least eight games that do not appear in his record. Since his record was 10 victories and only two defeats, you can chalk up 1-8 games the Reds would not have won without with-out him. Take those 18 games out of the victory column and put them on the other side of the ledger and the Reds would have been whistling for a pennant, much less a World series. "Bcggs has the two qualities that are most essential to a relief pitcher," pitch-er," Bill said. "Control and faith in himself. A fellow moving in to check an enemy assault must be able to get the ball around the plate and must take no account of the odds against him. Bcggs has wonderful won-derful control and I never saw a pitcher who, without being in the least conceited, never has the slightest slight-est doubt about himself." Scries Power House Werber, this year as last, was the key man in the infield which, by the way, made fewer errors than any in the league. Challengers in 1938. the Reds cracked in the infield and faded fad-ed as the Cubs went on to win. Last year Werber, at third base, worked a startling improvement in their first line of defense, pulling it sharply sharp-ly together and holding it. This year he not only kept a tight grip on the defense but on the attack at-tack he slammed the ball la the pinches. |