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Gorgon & Thor. Hank Bauer is the kind of man everybody wants for a friend—because only a suicide would want him for an enemy. When he frowns, Gorgon shudders. When he talks, Thor answers. He is all bituminous at heart, but he is hewn of anthracite. Bauer looks, says one Oriole player, "like an M-l ready to go off." He commands respect, he commands obedience, and he commands a certain amount of controversy. His own boss, Oriole General Manager Lee MacPhail, calls him "no great shakes as a baseball strategist" and says that he "manages by instinct." But Third Baseman Robinson, who prides himself on being a strategist, says: "On the plays Hank has pulled that I don't agree with, he has proved to be right 95% of the time." One thing is certain: if the Baltimore Orioles do win the pennant, they will win it because of Bauer. Just a year ago, essentially the same Oriole team was stumbling along in fourth place, 14½ games off the pace.
For Baltimore, winning the American League pennant—or just beating those Double Damn Yankees—would be sweet revenge indeed. Baltimore and baseball once went together like Boston and beans: the original Orioles won three straight National League pennants in the 1890s. Then came disaster: Star Players John J. McGraw and Iron Man Joe McGinnity jumped their contracts, and in 1903 the franchise was sold to a group of New Yorkers for $18,000. Renamed the Highlanders, the migrating Birds sang no songs in New York either —until they began calling themselves the Yankees and hired a kid from the sandlots of Baltimore named George Herman Ruth.
It took Baltimore 51 years just to get back to the big leagues. Finally, in 1954, the St. Louis Browns packed up and moved East. Browns or Orioles, they were still the worst team in baseball, but Baltimore greeted them like champs. ON TO THE PENNANT, whooped the normally staid Morning Sun, and a monumental welcoming parade tied up traffic for hours. Baltimore Poet Laureate Ogden Nash dashed off a ditty to celebrate the frabjous day:
Wee Willie Keeler runs through the town,
All along Charles Street in his nightgown,
Belling like a hound dog gathering the pack,
Hey, Wilbert Robinson, the Orioles are back.
Hey, Hughie Jennings, hey, John McGraw,
I got fire in my eye and tobacco in my jaw.
Hughie, hold my halo, I'm sick of being a saint;
Got to teach the youngsters to hit 'em where they ain't.
Fair or Foul. The fledgling Orioles needed teaching, all right. That first season they wound up 57 games out of first place. Next year they finished seventh; then sixth. Baltimore fans hardly seemed to notice: "Bushers," visiting players called the crowds for screaming like banshees at every ball the Orioles hit—fair or foul. At last, in 1960, there was something worth cheering about: under Manager Paul Richards, that old shrewdie, the Orioles flew all the way up to second place. In 1961, after a bad start, they won 95 games—a club record. Aha, said the never-die fans—just wait till next year. But then Richards quit to become general manager of the Houston Colts, and the job of winning a pennant went to Billy Hitchcock, softhearted Southerner who had never managed a big-league team.