Sport: Four Straight

Before last week’s World Series many a baseball fan, particularly in Cincinnati, thought the Reds had a chance to beat the Yankees. For precedent they pointed to 1914. In that brave year the Boston Braves, depending almost entirely on two brilliant pitchers (just as the Reds did this year), trounced the walloping Philadelphia Athletics, rated—with their hundred-thousand-dollar infield—the greatest team in major-league history (just as the Yankees are today). Such wishful fans cited the fact that, out of 34 World Series, 13 had been nabbed with just two pitchers winning the necessary four games. Only five years ago the famed Dean Brothers (Dizzy & Daffy) did it.

But after the sun had set on the first game of the Series last week, Cincinnati rooters realized that they had been far too optimistic. This Yankee team was a sure-enough nonpareil. Although big Paul Derringer had pitched a magnificent game, the Yankees, with a magician at every position, had nosed out the Reds, 2-to-1. From then on, it was a rout. They won the Series in four straight games (including a two-hit shutout by ailing Monte Pearson). They won the Series for the fourth year in a row—a feat that not even nonpareils had ever accomplished before.

Baseball fans, aware that the Yankees have most of the best young baseballers in the U. S. tucked away on their farms, wondered if they would live to see, ever again, a pull-devil-pull-baker World Series.