Cards still favored to top Browns
Cooper to face Potter in opener tomorrow; figures support Birds
By Leo H. Petersen, United Press sports editor
St. Louis, Missouri –
The Cardinals, perennial champions so far as this city along the banks of the Mississippi is concerned, came back to Sportsman’s Park today as the betting favorites for the 1944 World Series, but they found that their hometown had gone all out sentimentally for the rags-and-riches boys of Luke Sewell.
The facts and figures supported the betting odds, but they didn’t take into consideration the fighting heart of the American League Champion Browns.
For in the seven-game series that decides the gold and glory, past performances can be written off the record books and, if an old baseball tradition is borne out, the Browns will be the team to beat.
Browns ‘hot’
They are going into the series the “hot” club. They battled the Tigers right down to the wire – the final day of the season – before they won their first American League title, while the Cardinals coasted to their third consecutive National League pennant.
The pressure on the Browns has been heavy – but they have been winning and the Cardinals in the past month have looked like anything but the pre-war ball club they were in piling up such an early lead that their pennant drive was never in doubt.
Maybe Manager Billy Southworth can get his horde of stars back on the victory trail, for the cold statistics showed them superior to the Browns in almost every department of the game. But it was a sure bet that there was another department in which they might tie the Browns but never beat them – and that was fighting heart.
Few stars
Never before has a team with such few established major leaguers as the Browns even won a league pennant. All season long, no matter what the odds were against them, they came up with championship pitching from a staff that had no champions, hitting from batters who were strictly so-so at the plate, and fielding from fielders who had never been better than mediocre.
National Leaguers – and a lot of American Leaguers, too – felt that the Browns have been playing over their heads. They figured that the fighting spirit which carried them into baseball’s top ranks, after years and years in the poorer brackets, may have been good enough for a league championship but would probably fall short when World Series chips are riding.
While the Browns were sentimental favorites, St. Louis was taking its two champions in stride. Fans here have been used to Cardinals victories, but Brown triumphs have been something the town has been waiting for since the American League began operations in 1902.
Now they have it – but they aren’t too concerned about it. Hotels are sold out, tickets are going at scalper prices running as high as $50 for a box seat. Speculation is rife on the possible starting pitchers for the opener, but there was little to upset the even tenor of the ways of a war-boom town. While sellouts for little Sportsman’s Park were assured for as many games as will be necessary to decide the championship, there have been no rip-roaring celebrations, nothing to upset the blasé St. Louis fans.
Neither Southworth nor Sewell would say definitely who their starting pitchers would be tomorrow, but the assignments probably will go to Morton Cooper, the strong-armed righthander of the Cards, and Nelson Potter, a bargain basement pitcher whose clutch hurling kept the Browns in the running when they appeared out of the championship picture after kicking away a seven-game mid-August lead.
No Brownie injuries
Sewell had no injuries to worry about. His only problem was to keep his club keyed up to the pitch that carried it through one of the gamest stands a team has ever made.
But the situation was different with Southworth. His hitting star, Stan Musial, was recovering from injuries; his southpaw pitching ace, Max Lanier, was trying to shake off a late-season slump which saw him knocked out of the box seven times in as many starts, and outfielders Danny Litwhiler and Johnny Hopp were doubtful starters. Litwhiler has a bad knee, Hopp a bad back. The chances were both would play and that Southworth would try Lanier in the second game against Jack Kramer. There wasn’t much doubt but that the other starting pitchers would be Ted Wilks and Harry Brecheen for the Cardinals and Denny Galehouse and Sig Jakucki for the Browns.
Williams: St. Lou agog, but not over the Cardinals
By Joe Williams
St. Louis, Missouri –
There is a great deal of agoging out here. Practically all the citizens are agog. This is understandable. The town is about to enjoy its first in-the-family, exclusive, all-ours World Series. Beginning tomorrow, the St. Louis Browns play the St. Louis Cardinals for the world’s championship. Only a captious person would stop to ask how St. Louis playing St. Louis could possibly hope to settle a world issue. Certainly no one from New York, where similar fiction is commonplace, should bring up the report.
The difference here is that the Browns never before have been cast in a global role. This is the first time they have ever been in a World Series. It is interesting to study the reactions. The Browns are led by one Luke Sewell, rather undistinguished in baseball up to now, beyond his contributions as a first or third base coach and as a fair sort of catcher.
Who’s Eisenhower?
From what you read and hear here, Mr. Sewell has just completed a campaign which makes blushers of Eisenhower, Patton and Montgomery. There is a description of him as he sits in the clubhouse following the all-decisive victory over the Yankees on the final days of the season which would stir the memories of Carl Sandburg; it would make him feel close to the tired, weary and stricken Lincoln at Gettysburg.
This is not meant to be too cynical. Rather, to picture the emotion and attitude of a town that for so many years was denied a place among American League winners, and what could be more natural, in the zone of sports, than that the manager would take on a spiritual quality and that it would be accepted as such by citizens, frustrated for almost two generations?
It’s different now
Pennants are not unknown out here but were unknown to the Browns, achieving their first in 43 years. It is not difficult to imagine how a faithful follower of the Browns must have felt and how he feels today. All at once the sun has started to shine for him; he is no longer the underprivileged or the “little man,” to whom Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Wallace and Ma Perkins refer with such sympathy, from now on, even to the end of time, nobody can say his team never won a pennant, and if there is an implied suggestion here that the New Deal has improved its position in the election, all I can say is that Governor Dewey’s broad strategy must make the best of it.
As a matter of fact, Mr. Roosevelt’s handlers would be smart if they capitalized on the Browns’ victory. One incident alone would be of material help. The pitcher who won the pennant-winning game never pitched in the big leagues before. A year ago, at this time, he was pitching semi-pro ball in the Southwest. Today he is the hero of St. Louis. From mediocrity to magnificence! And he beat the Yankees, blasted Hoover’s symbol of capitalism in baseball. Even Stalin couldn’t ask for a better natural.
