The Village Smithy
By Chester L. Smith, sports editor
New York –
Up to this moment, it’s easy to pick the winner of the World Series.
The answer is nobody is going to win it. The Cardinals can’t, unless they snap out of the St. Louis Blues rhythm they have shown so far; the Yankees can’t if the Cardinals don’t hand it to them, and that patient old codger, Mr. Paying Patron, Esq., is going to take an unmerciful licking if he has to put down his good money to look at the sort of baseball he got for his dollar yesterday.
A young lady with two pennants, a souvenir program, the remnants of a hot dog on the lapel of her nifty sports jacket and the stub for a box seat, battled into the subway at the Stadium after the Yanks had taken No. 1 by 4–2 yesterday and delivered a brief but pointed oration to a group of strangers.
She exclaimed:
That was the worst exhibition of the national pastime I have ever seen.
…and while it wasn’t that bad, it was a long way from being good. The Cardinals didn’t seem to want the Yankees to lose and there were times when the Bombers appeared to be cherishing a great love for their enemies from the National League.
As of noon today, the Series is exactly where it was a year ago – the Yanks are one game up. And there is one conclusion that might be drawn from what went on in the Bronx. Joe Gordon is “hot,” and this could very well be the difference in the final analysis. When Joseph, who was distinctly off when these same teams met a year ago, has his motors purring and is on the beam, he’s as great a second baseman as ever lived. Yesterday, as a starter, he produced a 400-foot home run to put the Yanks ahead at one stage of the game and equaled the World Series record for assists – eight – at his position. At least three of his stops were the kind that bring you out of your seat with your hair standing on end.
Smiling Will Terry, the ex-Giant, who is experting over a typewriter for a Memphis paper, described Gordon’s work as one of the finest individual performances the Series has ever witnessed. He should know, for man and boy, he has been in plenty of them himself and looked at a good many more.
But the rest of it was pretty awful. There were four hits out of 15 that weren’t distinctly black market – Gordon’s jackpot smash, a smoking single to left by Mr. Spud Chandler, and drives to right by Ray Sanders and Stan Musial. The one that carried the most authority was Musial’s, in the eighth. The Donora Dandy had been easy for Chandler on his first three trips and must have been mad about it, for his clothesline to Tut Stainback was so hard that Walker, who was on first, was unable to get past second before the ball was returned to the infield – and the Cardinals second-sacker is about as fast as they come.
If the same game had been put on by the Phillies and Braves in late August, the customers would have walked out and gone home to supper after the sixth.
Among those who failed to displace the mental or mechanical agility generally associated with a contest for the championship of the world were Walker Cooper, the Redbirds’ master catcher, of all people, and Brother Nicholas “Tanglefoot” Etten, the Yankees first baseman. In the latter’s case, there may be some excuse, for Nick has never been known as an athlete who had aspirations to steal the title from Hal Chase, Lou Gehrig or Lefty Grimm, but the experts were at a loss to explain what happened to Cooper. They preferred to say he was merely having a bad day and await further developments.
Cooper and Max Lanier teamed with Klein to award the Yanks their first run in the fourth. Frankie Crosetti opened the inning by rolling to Klein, who made a brilliant stop and throw, only to have Lanier drop the ball after he had Crosetti retired. With Billy Johnson at the plate, Crosetti headed for second and Cooper rifled a peg 10 feet over the bag which would have meant an extra base had it not been for good backing up by Harry Walker in center field. Johnson then bunted to Sanders, and, when Klein stood rooted in his tracks instead of covering first, all hands were safe. The run came over when Charlie Keller grounded into a double play. Gordon, who shouldn’t have batted in that inning at all, followed with his home run and the American Leaguers were in the lead.
Etten’s “skull,” which gave the Cardinals the opening to tie the score in the fifth, was a classic. Sanders drove what looked like a certain base hit close to second, but Gordon made a storybook stop and throw that failed to get the runner only because the toss had to be made off balance. Sanders was clearly safe and umpire Beans Reardon ruled it that way. But Etten thought it was a putout and gleefully whipped the ball to Bill Dickey. But Dickey wasn’t looking and, when he did realize what had happened, the best he could do was cuff down the horsehide with his gloved hand and start chasing it. Sanders was anchored on second long before Dickey and the ball had been reunited and might have made third if he had not been so surprised. Lanier’s blooping hit into short center completed the damage.
In the clubhouse, after the game, a much-chastened Yankees first baseman swore he was “goin’ to let the umpires make the decisions after this.”
There was a good deal more shoddy play that won’t show up in the box score, but maybe we should let bygones be bygones. They can hardly be so bad again.
It was Lanier’s wild pitch in the sixth, allowing Crosetti to come in from second and Johnson to scramble from first to third, that eventually brought the downfall of the champions, and here too, it is likely that Gordon was the man behind the gun. He was at bat when lefty Max Lanier caromed a sharp-breaking curve off the plate. It bounced high and crazily into the air and before Walker Cooper could get the scent and track down the ball, the parade was on.
As Gordon told about it later, Lanier was shying away from throwing him a fast ball. Joe said:
I had hit his fast one into the stands and I could see he wasn’t going to give me another chance, so I guess when he had two strikes on me, he decided to come in with his “hook” and put too much stuff on it.
Whatever happened, it was a fitting way for the Cardinals to lose such a crazy-quilt game. What’s more, Chandler deserved to win, and if the Yanks couldn’t do it for him, the National Leaguers showed an excellent appreciation of their sense of values by taking matters in their own hands.
always next year.
.