The Village Smithy
By Chester L. Smith, sports editor
New York –
Before a World Series ball was pitched. Billy Southworth said that all the Cardinals had to do to stop the Yankees again was win at least one game here at the Stadium. So Willyum can roll back to St. Louis tonight and sleep early. No matter what happens today, he has the game he wanted.
Then, there’s another reason why the little skipper of the Redbirds can throw away his insomnia pills. We’re speaking now about Morton Cooper, the guy who could win 20 games or more over the season but was a pushover for American League batters. The Yanks murdered him twice last year and he was a duck on a pond in the All-Star Game last July, but yesterday, under singularly trying circumstances. Mort went down the line with the Bombers and held them to six hits to rack up his first Series victory. They say that once you can corner a gremlin and pin back his ears, your troubles are over, and it’s a fair enough guess that Cooper will pitch and win another game before the Series is over. He knows now the deck isn’t stacked against him, and all he has to do is keep plunking the ball into Brother Walker’s glove as he did before a jammed house yesterday up in the Bronx.
Morton Cooper did more than beat the Yanks. He scotched a batch of rumors that had been kicking around for the past week, the most vicious of which had concerned his relations with Southworth. Mort, they said, was sulking because he hadn’t drawn the assignment in the opening game, and the back fence gossips added that the affair had torn the team apart. Another favorite with the up-the-sleeve spies had him afflicted with a sore arm that would keep him out of the Series, but Southworth admitted last night that Cooper could have pitched on Tuesday as well as yesterday and had, in fact, warmed up for 20 minutes Sunday in preparation.
Billy declared:
I just had a hunch on Max Lanier and played it. There was nothing wrong with Mort and never has been.
And if you could have seen the way the Cardinals swarmed around the tall Missourian after the final putout yesterday, thumping him on the back and pumping his hand, you wouldn’t have given much for the suspicion that there was mutiny in the ranks. They all but carried him to the clubhouse, while Brother Walker, who had gobbled up Joe Gordon’s high foul to end the game, got his share of the impromptu celebration.
It must have been a nerve-wracking day for the Cooper boys. Their father, a rural mail carrier in Independence, Missouri, died suddenly yesterday morning and the word came to Walker in a telephone call from an older brother, Robert, who lives in St. Louis, an hour or two before noon. Manager Southworth immediately called the brothers to his room.
He told them:
You make the decision if you want to pitch. Mort, you can. If you don’t, it’s all right with me.
Morton replied that his father had been their best rooter. He told Southworth:
I think maybe I’d like to pitch.
…and Billy nodded agreement.
Mort left last night for his home. Walker, who broke down and cried on the bench before the game, will fly West immediately after this afternoon’s game.
Cooper might have put over a 4–1 decision on the American Leaguers except for a freakish Yank hit and a fuzzy but of fielding by Danny Litwhiler in the ninth. Frankie Crosetti, who was first up in the bottom half of the fourth, bunted a pop fly that dropped behind Ray Sanders for a single. Bud Metheny flied to center, but Billy Johnson laced a hit over second to put Crosetti on third and when Charlie Keller flied to Harry Walker, Crosetti scored, although it would have been close had the throw been better.
Again in the ninth, after Johnson had doubled to left-center, Keller lashed a long hit to left. Litwhiler, perhaps confused by the strong sun and the fact that in the Stadium the ball comes out of deep shade in midafternoon, failed to get a good start, and it went over his head and rolled to the bleaches for a triple. Johnson crossed the plate and so did Keller while Lou Klein was throwing out Nick Etten, and thus the score was 4–3, even when it didn’t appear to be that close from the way the game was played.
Unlike the opener, yesterday’s match bore the championship stamp from beginning to end. Both Cooper and Ernie Bonham had pitching “it,” but the latter’s two shaky innings proved the deciding factor, perhaps it is unfair to Bonham to say that the third was a bad round, because only four batters came to the plate, but Marty Marion, first to face him, unloaded a home run into the left field stands and that was damage enough. Marion had missed a four-baser by not more than three feet the day before, but there was no question where this one was going from the instant it left his bat. Incidentally, the skinny shortstop equaled his season’s record for homers. He now has two for 1943, but he couldn’t have picked a more appropriate time to double his output.
The Cards really laid the wood to Bonham the next inning. Stan Musial opened with his second hit of the Series, a line single to center that would have taken the pitcher’s cap with it, if it had been a few feet lower. A sacrifice by Walker Cooper and Whitey Kurowski’s smash ferried Musial in and Sanders, who is rapidly becoming the hittingest of all the Cardinals, swept a homer into the right field stands.
For a fleeting second it looked as though the historic episode of the 1925 Series between the Pirates and the Washington Senators might be duplicated. That, you may recall, was Sam Rice’s disputed catch of Earl Smith’s drive, in Washington. Rice tumbled into the low stands in right and came up with the ball. Umpire Cy Rigler allowing the putout, although the Pirates always claimed it was not caught. Yesterday, Metheny leaped high for Sanders’ hit and fell partway into the crowd over the wall. Not until he recovered his balance could it been seen from the infield that he hadn’t snagged the agate.
The Yanks were favored with one good break that undoubtedly cut down the St. Louis run total. With Klein on second and Walker on first in the fifth, and two out, Walker Cooper blazed a line drive to Gordon’s right – at least it would have been to his right under normal circumstances, but Klein had broken for third on the pitch and Gordon, sensing a double steal, was tearing toward the bag to cover. All he had to do was put up his hands in self-defense and make the catch, ending the inning. It cost the Cardinals a sure run.
Cooper had a nervous inning, too, in the sixth when, following a hit by Crosetti, Brother Walker tipped Metheny’s bat and Bud was awarded first base by umpire Beans Reardon. Two on and nobody out, but Marion, Klein and Sanders came through with a glittering double play on Johnson’s bounder and Big Mort was in the clear.
always next year.
.