Sport: Sandlot Heroes

All summer long, on sandlots across the nation, 500,000 U.S. kids (all under 17) had been fighting it out, with a grimness not always to be seen in big league baseball. They were entries in the annual American Legion baseball championships. Last week the best four teams (from Trenton, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Los Angeles), toting their favorite bats and solemnly oiling up their mitts, journeyed by day-coach to Charleston, S.C. for the American Legion’s tenth annual Little World Series.

Scouts from 15 big league clubs were on hand. They knew from experience that the Little World Series is baseball’s best proving ground. In the early ’30s at Houston, they had seen a young pitcher named Phil Cavarretta (now the Chicago Cubs’ rightfielder) beat out fuzzy-cheeked Kirby Higbe (now the Brooklyn Dodgers’ pitching mainstay). A few years later in Charlotte, N.C. 17-year-old Hal Newhouser (now the Detroit Tigers’ 23-game winner, and the American League’s most valuable player in 1944 and 1945) wept in the locker room after losing a big game. About 275 big leaguers, one in five, have been Legion alumni.

This year scouts had their eye on Trenton’s 185-lb. first baseman, Dick Geidlin, batting an impressive .464. He promptly bounced a triple off the rightfield wall to break a tie, and beat Los Angeles in the fourth game. But Dick was only 16, and by baseball rules the scouts couldn’t even talk to him until he was 17 and no longer eligible to play Legion ball. Another whose name may some day shine in big league lights, Jack Carmichael, was a lanky righthander from Los Angeles with a burning fast ball. He fanned twelve New Orleans players, allowed but two hits, scored a 6-0 shutout. The winning team: New Orleans, victor over Trenton in the finals, 3-1.