Sport: Pitchers

National game of the U. S., baseball can be regarded as a delicate barometer of the U. S. state of mind. Before Depression, major interest of baseball addicts was the aggressive, expansive department of batting. Babe Ruth was the game’s No. 1 hero. Since Depression, major interest of baseball addicts has been the defensive, conservative department of pitching. Pitchers are currently the game’s top heroes. Last week, four able major-league pitchers made news in four utterly different ways.

Aside from pitching, major specialty of famed Jerome Herman (“Dizzy”) Dean of the St. Louis Cardinals is attracting attention to himself. Last spring Pitcher Dean’s exhibitionism took the form of demanding a higher salary, punching a sportswriter, threatening to retire. Since the season started, Pitcher Dean has got into sports headlines by complaining about umpires’ decisions, fighting, pitching “bean balls” (TIME, June 7). Last fortnight, Pitcher Dean’s readiness to cause a sensation took the new and unpredictable form of a visit to Belleville, Ill. where he addressed the Presbyterian Men’s Club. Next day the Belleville Daily Advocate reported that in the course of his speech Pitcher Dean had called the National League’s President Ford Frick and its Umpire George Barr “the two biggest crooks in baseball.” Last week, when the Cardinals went to New York to play the Brooklyn Dodgers, Pitcher Dean was notified that he had been indefinitely suspended by President Frick, would not be reinstated until he signed a letter of apology, retraction or denial.

If President Frick’s purpose in chastising Pitcher Dean was to deflate his ego, he failed sadly. Instead there followed an absurd uproar which filled U. S. sports pages for three days while Pitcher Dean reiterated: “I’m not goin’ to sign nothin’!” Baseball’s noisiest dispute since Babe Ruth was fined $5,000 for insubordination in 1925, the Dean-Frick fight ended after three days in a ludicrously solemn compromise. Witnessed by two dozen newshawks, President Frick asked Pitcher Dean whether he had made the remarks attributed to him by the Belleville Advocate. As a reward for repudiating them, Pitcher Dean, though he would still “not sign nothin’,” was reinstated.

Far less publicized than Pitcher Dean, long, lean, left-handed Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants has a far higher rating for efficiency. Most startling of the many pitching statistics that prove Hubbell the ablest member of his profession currently performing was his record, started last July, of winning 24 league games in a row. Closest approach to this record was made in 1911-12 by Rube Marquard who won 20 straight games.

Last week in New York, Pitcher Hubbell walked out to the pitcher’s box to try to extend his string to 25 against the Brooklyn Dodgers, as a preface to receiving a prize for being the most valuable National League player of 1936. When the game ended, Pitcher Hubbell needed the prize for consolation. Aided by able pitching from towering Van Lingle Mungo, one of Hubbell’s few real rivals, Brooklyn had knocked him out of the box in the fourth inning, beaten the Giants 10-to-3.

Rarest and most satisfying achievement for a pitcher is a no-hit game, of which there have been 115 in major-league history. Last week in Chicago, spectacled Pitcher Bill Dietrich of the Chicago White Sox, who was barely good enough to make the team last year, pitched the first one in the major leagues since August 31, 1935. Rarest and most satisfying kind of no-hit game is one in which no batter reaches first base, of which there are six on record in the major leagues. In Pitcher Dietrich’s no-hit game, which the White Sox won, 8-to-0, three members of the St. Louis Browns reached first base—two on walks, one on an infield error.

In Washington last week, the U. S. Patent Office issued to the Bob Feller Co. of Cleveland Trade Mark Certificate of Registration No. 390,512 for the words “Hi-Feller,” to use with picture of Bob Feller “on nonalcoholic, maltless beverages,” and Certificate No. 389,499 for the words “Good Feller,” for use “on candies and candy bars.” In Cleveland last week, Pitcher Bob Feller, 18-year-old prodigy of the Cleveland Indians who has been out of action almost since the season’s start with a sore right arm, reported for action after a week’s treatment by a chiropractor in Milwaukee.