Sport: Pennant Winners

In the ninth inning, with the score 2 to 1 in favor of the Washington Senators, with two out and the tying run on base, Oscar Melillo of the St. Louis Browns lifted a long fly to left field. Heinie Manush, Washington’s fielder, started with the crack of the bat. He dived forward near the wall, rolled over on the turf, came up without his cap but with the ball gripped tightly in his glove, a brilliant catch that ended the game and, statistically, the astonishing major league baseball season of 1933.

Estimating the chances of the major league teams last spring, most baseball experts predicted that the New York Yankees would repeat their American League success of 1932. They suggested that Washington might, if its new Playing Manager Joe Cronin got his share of luck, get second place. In the National League, experts almost unanimously predicted that the New York Giants would finish in the second division, probably sixth. While the Senators were clinching their pennant in Washington last week, the Giants were getting an official welcome in Manhattan. They had won the National League pennant three days prior. Not all disheartened by their miserable forecasts last April, baseball experts promptly made Washington a 7-10-5 favorite to win the World Series, starting Oct. 3. Main feature of the Giants’ success this season has been their pitching staff, led by fat Freddie Fitzsimmons, 21 -year-old Hal Schumacher, lean left-handed Carl Hubbell. Roy Parmelee, who performed brilliantly earlier in the season, recently lost control. His wild pitches broke the wrists of Boston Outfielder Randy Moore and Chicago Infielder Stanley Hack. A harder hitting team and, man for man, more impressive on the strength of batting and fielding averages, the Senators this year developed a crack centre fielder, Fred Schulte, to replace Sam West whom Owner Clark Griffith surprisingly traded last spring. Their young first baseman, Joe Kuhel, is a hard hitter and usually a good base-runner though he nearly delayed the Senators’ pennant-clinching last week by falling asleep on third base in the important game with St. Louis. Teams which function unexpectedly in the regular season may function even more strangely when they play against each other. If that is the case, when the Giants meet the Senators the World Series may be decided by managerial skill. Next week’s will be the first World Series since 1906—when the Chicago White Sox under Fielder Jones beat the Chicago Cubs under Frank Chance—between two teams with player-managers.

Youngest manager in the Major Leagues, shortstop Joe Cronin, 26, got his job last October when Owner Griffith decided to rebuild his team. He had joined the Senators in 1928, after a year with the Pittsburgh Pirates in which, from the bench, he watched them lose the World Series. Like college football coaches, Young Cronin often encourages his players with locker-room talks. When Washington lost two games to the Yankees in one day last August, and seemed about to slip into second place, Manager Cronin gave his team a specially vigorous oration. They beat the Yankees in the remaining game of the series, never came dangerously close to losing the league lead there after. Tall and hefty, with a pleasant Irish face reminiscent of Golfer Bobby Jones’s, Manager Cronin is shy, superstitious, still as fond of tennis as when he was San Francisco’s playground champion at 14. He lives modestly at Washington’s Wardman Park Hotel, where he has his own Negro cook. Owner Clark Calvin Griffith had special reason to be pleased with Cronin’s success. He likes playing managers. The Senators won pennants in 1924 and 1925 under young Bucky Harris who last week disappointedly resigned as manager of the Detroit Tigers. When Griffith picked Cronin last autumn, most of his players were surprised and by June, when the Senators were faltering in second place, even Owner Griffith was ready to admit that he had made a mistake. Griffith’s faith in player-managers may be due partly to the fact that he himself was one for many years. Ban Johnson started an American League team in New York in 1903, made Griffith, then star pitcher for the Chicago White Sox, manager. The New York Highlanders almost won the pennant in 1904. After an unsuccessful interlude as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, Clark Griffith went to Washington in 1911, managed the team ably until he was elected president of it in 1921. First Baseman Bill Terry of the Giants came by his position when John Joseph McGraw suddenly resigned last year. He promptly canceled most of the disciplinary rules which McGraw’s players resented, managed to raise the team from eighth to sixth place before the season was over. An easy-going executive, Terry’s success may be largely due to the fact that he is the antithesis of his brilliant, domineering predecessor. He never takes a pitcher out of the box without chatting about it with the rest of the infield and the pitcher himself. He lets his smart Catcher Gus Mancuso study opposing batters, instruct pitchers, instead of trying to do it himself. When he joined the Giants in 1923, Terry’s confreres soon discovered that his off-season occupations had made him “fat as a seal”—i. e. rich. Three years ago he talked of retiring unless his salary was promptly raised to $25,000 a year. Owner Charles Stoneham of the Giants, who last week happily congratulated Terry when the team arrived in New York, threatened to “run him out of baseball” if he refused to accept $15,000. In Memphis, where he lives, Terry’s friends think of the summer as his offseason. He is president of an insecticide factory, a director of Boy Scouts, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, a Standard Oil contact man, owner of a chain of filling stations and auto laundries.

Little World Series. Winners of the American Association pennant for the first time in 26 years, the Columbus Red Birds last week lost the first game of the Little World Series, 7 to 6, to the Buffalo Bisons, who had finished fourth in the International League’s regular season, won the pennant in the play-offs that were tried this year for the first time. Next day Columbus won the second game, 8 to 6, with a rain of homeruns in the fifth inning.