Sport: Slaughter & Co.

It is strictly against the rules to feed a race horse little white pills to give it more pep. In baseball, not so. Last spring Manager Billy Southworth of the St. Louis Cardinals began dosing his players with vitamin B1 pills. Last week, as the baseball season neared its eighth week, the hopped-up Redbirds were going lickety-split in the National League pennant race.

Out in front, two games ahead of the Brooklyn Dodgers and 13 ahead of the World Champion Cincinnati Reds, the Cardinals had set the league’s high winning streak, eleven games in a row. They led the league in batting (.290), fielding (.981). They looked so slick that Betting Commissioner Jack Doyle changed his pre-season odds, made the Cards favorites to win the National League pennant this year.

In pre-season prognostications, experts figured the Cardinals would finish third, as they did last year. The team relied on a mighty slugger named Slaughter and two other outfielders who hit over .300. They had First Baseman Johnny Mize, No. 1 home-run hitter of 1940. But their pitching was questionable, their fielding unreliable. To replace Outfielder Joe Medwick, Pitcher Curt Davis and Catcher Mickey Owen, three Old Reliables recently sold to the rival Brooklyn Dodgers, Manager Southworth had brought up a batch of green rookies from the Cardinals’ far-flung farms.

But last week it looked as if this year’s crop was a bumper. Slugger Slaughter had led the early-season attack, with a batting average of .400, but the rookies had followed through like veterans. At second base, little Frank (“Creepy”) Crespi displayed some fancy fielding; at bat, big Walker Cooper, filling in as first-string catcher, proved a valuable newcomer to Slaughter & Co.

But it was the pitchers who really deserved the medals. During an early-season ten-game winning streak, five rookie pitchers had accounted for five victories. Most outstanding was Sam Nahem (rhymes with mayhem), who pitched a three-hitter in his first big-league game, chalked up three more victories in three more starts.

Nahem is no Bob Feller, but he is one of the most extraordinary of this year’s freshman pitchers. Big, begoggled, 25, he has an LL.B. degree from St. John’s University, passed the New York bar examinations last year. On the mound, Nahem has the cunning of a prosecuting attorney. His best ball is a slider (a deceptive fast ball that sneaks up on the batter, then suddenly slides away from his bat). He throws his curves both sidearm and overhand: sidearm to right-handed hitters, overhand to lefties.