(See Cover)
The Hatfields and McCoys of baseball were at it again; for the fifth time in nine years, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Brooklyn Dodgers were in a slambang fight for the National League pennant. The hopes of the other six clubs were as dead as Abner Doubleday's grandfather.
As the National League lead seesawed through August, fans who lived far from Brooklyn or St. Louis began to take sides. The Midwest, from Chicago to the Ozarks and down into Texas, was Cardinal country; the Dodger cheering section was centered east of the Alleghenies. The two teams had almost monopolized the National League pennant since 1940—the Cards won it four times and the Dodgers twice—and it was clear to all but the die-hards of mathematical chance that one of them was going to do it again. As far west as San Francisco last week, Dow-Jones tickers carried the inning-by-inning score to boardrooms, and fans clustered around radio sets as St. Louis, nursing a two-game lead, came face-to-face with the Dodgers in a three-game series in Brooklyn.
With a Bicycle. At Ebbets Field, a restless buzz rose from the crowd as the first two Cardinals took their turns at bat. Then a slender young man, wearing No. 6 on his back, stepped to the plate. Stan ("The Man") Musial was at bat and the crowd really let go. A hard-bitten minority booed, but they were drowned out by the cheers. It was Brooklyn's sportsmanlike tribute to one of the greatest players in the game. Stan Musial is the highest salaried (at $50,000 a year) and most feared batter in the National League—and especially devastating in Brooklyn, where he has batted well over .500 this season. When Musial grounded out that first time UD, Ebbets Field breathed more easily. But on his next trip to the plate, Brooklyn groaned. "The Man" had lined up on an inside pitch and hit it squarely.
The ball cleared the right-field screen, sailed across Bedford Avenue and came to earth in a parking lot about 415 ft. from home plate. The Cardinals won, 5-3, and there was no joy in Brooklyn. There was still less in the first inning of the second game that day when Musial belted another homer to give St. Louis a two-run lead. Things looked black in Brooklyn, but it turned out to be the darkness before dawn. The desperate Dodgers got down in the dirt, clawing and scratching, and won the second game, 4-3.
In the rubber game, Brooklyn's big Negro righthander, Don Newcombe, silenced Cardinal bats (6-0) with the help of outfielders who chased fly balls like men on bicycles and made "impossible" catches. One smash from Musial's bat would have been a triple if Outfielder Luis Olmo had not bounded high into the air against the left-center-field wall and made the catch-of-the-month.
Brooklyn had managed to beat the Cards two straight; it was more than anybody else seemed able to do. While the Dodgers were breaking even against the Chicago Cubs and winning one from the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Cards moved across the river to the Polo Grounds and took three out of four from the Giants (with the help of three Musial homers); then they went to Boston, took two more from the Braves, with Musial clouting a homer and a triple.