Sport: Unpredictable Dodgers

Since last October the Brooklyn Dodgers have spent close to half a million dollars for players. They gave the American Association’s Louisville Colonels $75,000 for Infielder Peewee Reese. They gave the St. Louis Cardinals $200,000 for Outfielder Ducky Medwick. Last week, while Rookie Reese was on the side lines with a broken heel bone and Slugger Medwick was hitting like a bush leaguer, Brooklyn fans crammed Ebbets Field to salute the player they consider the most valuable Dodger of the year: Pitcher Freddy Fitzsimmons, a Giant castoff picked up for a song three years ago.

Freddy Fitzsimmons is fat and one year short of 40. Yet in this, his 16th year of big-league baseball, he has pitched the Dodgers to twelve victories (and only two defeats), the best 1940 pitching average in the National League. Because he recently joined the select circle of pitchers who have won 200 games, Dodger rooters last week presented Hero Fitzsimmons with a $1,700 sedan (bought with a barrelful of nickels and dimes), enough luggage for a round-the-world cruise, a radio, shotgun, suit of clothes and a watch whose dial spells F.Fitzsimmons. Only other active major-leaguers who have won 200 games or more: Carl Hubbell of the Giants, Ted Lyons of the White Sox, Lefty Grove of the Red Sox, Red Ruffing of the Yankees.