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Show A LfJLkid FOR four years the New York Yankees dominated baseball to such an extent they left a cock-eyed slant on the double corral. They left too definite an impression that the American league was the whole show, including the pink lemonade, the big tent, the elephants, the hard blue seats and the side-show after the main act. It was never quite that way. It wasn't the American league wmi." dominated the dia- i ji ..'jimji." ii mond. It was merely Xj the New York Yan-' Yan-' kees. They won i something like 28 " s&T. s out of 31 World Se-f Se-f ries games, dating ' I from 1927. So, natu- rally, the National league must have I , been a flock of sand s f.VA, lotters. ! But don'1 forget mm30 that during that four Granted year sPe11 th,e Yan" Rice kees were also an- nihilating, assas- sinaung, muiuciuiB, o and mauling the Boston Red Sox, the Detroit Tigers, the Cleveland Indians In-dians and the remainder of their league. I recall a certain Yankee slump in the Midwest a year or two ago. They lost six out of eight games. I asked one of the Yankees about this cave in. "No," he said, "we were not ex- actly loafing. But why run for a car you've caught. We knew we were from 12 to 15 games better than the rest of the league. We knew we could loaf and still gallop in." I But Not Today But it's all different today. The , Yankees of 1940 are far and away from the Yankees of 1936, 1937, 1938 and 1939. And with the dizzy descent of the Yankees from their old heights, so the dominance of the American league has ended. I saw the National league win its all-star game in Tampa last March. I saw National league pitchers tie American league sluggers into an assortment of true lovers' knots. The same thing happened in St. Louis recently. Once again National league pitchers put silencers on American league bats. In the last 18 innings of all-star play, from March to July, American Ameri-can league sluggers have ham--1 mered, exploded, thundered and mauled one flabby run across tne plate. There was a time when the A. L. had most of the dynamite. It may have the jump in t long-range shooting today, but not 1''', against the pick of National league gf 1 pitching. No set of A home-run sluggers M JA are going to make U , i any headway against t M Paul Derringer, i j g Bucky Walters, Carl i 4 M Hubbell (that's right) or many others I could name. The Yankees Paul Derringer from 1935 through 1939 were an exception. They had practically everything the hitting, ..... c..u; fho nitchinir. the confl- dence and the poise. They had amazing amaz-ing balance, which is something that time works on in its leisurely way. The Two Leagues j American leaguers will tell you that Detroit, Cleveland, Boston and . New York all could win the National league pennant, with something to spare. National leaguers, now lifted from the gloomy abyss of the years that knewdefeat, are telling you the Reds and Dodgers would run away with an American league pennant. "What do you suppose," one veteran vet-eran National leaguer asked me, "would happen to that American league if their hitters had to move out against Paul Derringer, Bucky Walters, Junior Thompson, Jim Turner, Whitey Moore ana omm day after day? There wouldn't be a team in that league hitting .240 against Red pitching." This is moving a trifle fast the other way. The two leagues now are better balanced than they have been in some years. Again this is largely due to the Yankee drop. "Where are my Ruffings and Dickeys Dick-eys and Gehrigs and Gomezes and Gordons ana nones aim t-iut.. Joe McCarthy also might be asking today. Baseball, in losing the four-year Yankees losing them so far, at least has built up additional interest inter-est through both leagues, especially the American league. m wind: Etc. The present campaign imj uc HI wind for the Yankees, but it has been a soothing summer breeze for the other clubs which have been shivering in the Barren Lands since 1935. Now we have two great pennant races, two well-matched leagues, and two great stretch runs on ahead. Who can ask for more? Barring, of course, the Yankees, who still ;an't understand who swung the lead pipe and just what has happened. |