Sport: My Center-Fielder

Manager Billy Southworth of the Boston Braves had good reason to be happy during spring training, which is a notably optimistic time of year anyhow. After one of the largest rebuilding jobs in major-league history (TIME, Dec. 26), Billy finally had an outfield. He had given up his keystone combination of Alvin Dark and Eddie Stanky to get Sid Gordon and Willard Marshall from the New York Giants along with Infielder Buddy Kerr and Pitcher Sam Webb. On top of that, his bosses, Boston building contractors, had shoveled out $100,000 and three players to get fleet-footed Rookie Sam Jethroe from Brooklyn’s canny Branch Rickey.

“Jethroe is my opening-day center-fielder,” says Southworth of the 28-year-old East St. Louis-born Negro speedster who is being readied to play his first season in the majors. Southworth’s positiveness stems from Jethroe’s record with Montreal last season, where he broke the International League record by stealing 89 bases (seven less than Ty Cobb’s modern major-league record of 96), batted a neat .326, second highest in the league.

Opening day is still five weeks away, but in the first exhibition game of the training season last week, Billy tried out his new outfield against Brooklyn’s National League champion Dodgers. The Gordon-Marshall-Jethroe trio bashed out seven hits, drove in six runs; Jethroe got a single and a double. In the ninth inning, after an intentional pass and a hit, Sam Jethroe took a lead off third base. Rookie Brooklyn Pitcher Billy Loes had heard about those 89 stolen bases for Montreal; he got to worrying. Trying to pick Sam off third, he tossed a wild one. Sam trotted happily home while Loes disconsolately took off to the showers. Final score: Boston 9, Brooklyn 3.

Though tabbed a rookie, Sam is not typical of the hundreds of well-advertised youngsters who periodically bounce in & out of the majors. Jethroe has been around too long, six years in the Negro American League, a little more than a year with Montreal. With the Cleveland Buckeyes, he led the Negro circuit in batting and base-stealing in 1942, 1944 and 1945. A devout Roman Catholic, Sam wears a Saint Christopher medal on & off the diamond, is convinced that he will hit .300 in the majors because “I’ve been praying for it … and too many people will be disappointed if I don’t.”

Among the others who would be praying for Rookie Jethroe were Billy Southworth and the citizens of Boston.