| OCR Text |
Show YlfHETHER it is Eddie Dyer's " ' Cardinals or Leo Durocher'a Dodgers who will be called on ta i meet Joe Cronin's Red Sox this fall, j there is one basic idea you can keep , in mind neither National league j team is going to surrender in advance. ad-vance. No other teams in baseball have been so well seasoned under fire from April into the final September stretch. There has been no resting spot for either club no loafing time or any recess in the day-by-day battle for the top. Both Cardinals Car-dinals and Dodgers by now should have -v. .. S'-s V v. i steel - shod nerves Stan Musial under the pressure that has kept both teams hustling to the limit in an all summer dog fight that has been one of the best in many years. Both Cardinals and Dodgers are loaded with dead-game ball players out to give all they have such men as Pete Reiser, Peewee Reese, Ed Stankey, Dixie Walker, Stan Musial, Marty Marion, Country Slaughter, Whitey Kurowski, Terry Moore and others from both scrappy camps. Their batting records show no such power as the Red Sox command. com-mand. Howie Pollet may be their only 20 -game winner. But there is more than' enough class on either team to give anyone a battle over the sprint route that a world series calls for. While neither Musial nor Walker has been able to turn on Ted Williams' power, both have been outhilting the Red Sox star through the greater part of the year. The averages tell you that Reiser, in condition, is one of the most valuable ball players baseball can show wben you consider his worth at bat, in a pinch, in the field and around the bases. The averages and the records of the field also prove that Musial is quite likely to out-hit Williams by a rather wide margin; not in the way of home runs, but in league leadership. Musial is one of the finest hitters we've seen in many years. His lifetime average is close to Williams', who has slipped a trifle from .356 to something around .353, which isn't too soggy for several sev-eral years. Outside of Musial and Walker, neither Cardinals nor Dodgers has other run-making hitters to match Pesky, Doerr and York, slashing Ted's three aiding musketeers. Eddie Dyer on Pitching After all, the pitching can play a star part in any world series, as pitching usually does. We were talking with Eddie Dyer, the Cardinal manager, about this section of the world series argument. argu-ment. . "In the first place," Dyer said, "the Cardinals haven't yet won the National league pennant this season. The Dodgers are a tough team to catch and shake loose. They don't seem to discourage easily. But if the Cardinals do manage to break in and get a shot at the Red Sox, I have a rather hazy idea our pitching pitch-ing staff can worry them a lot. "We have some left-handers that Williams and a number of others might not like too well. And if George Munger can work back to his old form in the next few weeks, we'll have our share of good right-banders right-banders to match any staff and that includes the Red Sox staff." No one can be sure yet just how good the Red Sox pitching is. There have been too many games where a Red Sox pitcher could dish out a flock of hits and runs, and yet breeze home. We were rather astonished to see that Dave Ferris and Tex Hughson, two Red Sox mainstays, had allowed more hostile hits than any two pitchers in their circuit. Both had been tapped safely safe-ly well over 200 times, where Spud Chandler had allowed only 151 hits and Hal Newhouser only 173. far below the Ferris-Hughson totals. The Red Sox have wrecked the American league through a killing margin in runs, base hits and runs batted in. Their stampede has been based on raw power, on attack, not on defense. Hughson, undoubtedly one of the best pitchers now at work, has had a rather spotty year, being slightly over the .500 mark with a great ! run-making machine at his back. Ferris has been their star workman, ! but even the able Ferris has absorbed his share of manhandling more than once. i lied Sox A o Cinch Bet ! The Red Sox will be favored to 1 .vin. but anyone who makes them ' 1 psided favorites can be labelled a trifle curious in the cupula.- As all round good as the Red Sox are, ;:nd they are good enough, up and :on the line, they are no invincible, invinci-ble, overwhelming force against either ei-ther of the two fast, game outfits. The main burden of proof is also n broad Red Sox backs who are expected by too many camp follow-, follow-, crs to win a four or five game romp. I |
