Sport: White Elephant

I won’t sign for no $10,000!” barked pompous Dizzy Dean last spring, scoffing at a 50% cut in the salary he had been getting from the Chicago Cubs the past two years. A few weeks later, after his baying had successfully reminded every baseball fan that “Ol’ Dizz”; was still in the game, Loudspeaker Dean characteristically signed his contract. Last week, proving as useful to the Cubs as a wet firecracker, the celebrated fireball who had been purchased two years ago for $185,-ooo cash (and three able-bodied players) was bunted back to the minors, his arm crippled at 29.

If people remember baseball a hundred years from now, Dizzy Dean will probably be remembered as one of the great pitchers of the 20th Century. In his first five years with the St. Louis Cardinals he averaged 24 victories a year. His 17 strikeouts in one game (in 1933) still stands as a four-star feat in modern baseball. But to this generation, Dizzy Dean, “a man of a few thousand words,” may be better remembered for his performances off the field than on.

In 1932, when he joined the Cardinals, U. S. sportswriters yipped with glee. A bumptious bumpkin, he was vague about his name (sometimes it was Jerome Her man Dean, sometimes Jay Hanna Dean) and his birthplace (either Texas or Oklahoma). But he was crystal clear about the fact that “Me’n’ Paul” (his younger brother who joined the Cardinals two years later) were the two best pitchers south of the North Pole. In 1934 he boasted that “Me’n’ Paul” together would win 45 games for the Cardinals (they won 49).

To anyone within earshot, the tall-talking southwesterner blustered about his stunt (which never actually happened) of getting married under floodlights at the home plate of a Houston ball park, about his registering at three St. Louis hotels at one time so that he could flop when he liked. On sizzling hot days he would build a bonfire in front of the Cardinal dugout, wrap himself in a blanket, do an Indian war dance. One night, out of ennui in a Philadelphia hotel, he and two teammates, dressed in painters’ overalls, dragged ladders and paint cans into a crowded ban quet hall, began to redecorate the walls.

Because of these antics, reverberating through the press, Dizzy Dean became the Rube Waddell of his time.

Last week, when “OF Dizz”; got his walking papers, he was in a Chicago hos pital recovering from a scalp wound, received in typical Dean fashion: the door of an automobile in which he was riding had jerked open, toppled him out on his head. -We’ll be back -don’t forget that,-chirped Mrs. Dean, explaining that the fabulous cripple who can no longer pitch overhand had asked to be sent to Tulsa, where, under the hot sun (most Tulsa games are played at night), he would develop a sidearm delivery, make a come back next year.

Owner P. K. Wrigley of the Cubs -still hopeful of getting some return on his quarter-of-a-million-dollar investment -sent Dean back to the Texas League un der option (subject to 24-hour recall) and sent a personal tutor along to give him pointers on sidearm pitching. But few fans expect ever again to see Wrigley’s white elephant in a Cub uniform.