BSH By LESTER RODNEY halt ni times in modern _base- i istory—in °41, 47, °49 and : i Brooklyn Dodgers have or the National League pen- Win Four times they have ee head on into the New ™ Yankees, champions of the ‘Merican League, and lost the nes Series. Never has the diva Shed world championship embatt kane vee ipa: the ve Walls o i - ets Field, s grimy old Eb re we go again! Once more Dodgers have won their lea- style ie though in - different signig an ever before. This time, fortabien ne” they breezed com- és Y home for the first time. Wi again they will lock heads Wil pane implacable Yankees. forla be ‘the same old story of a Series frustration for the the a Brooklyn and the rest of hs muted States who are, for mein or another, over- agai ingly for the Dodgers Inst the Yanks? a answer is one which will holaj # 00d part of the nation ak chai starting at 1 fw Nesday afternoon, Sep- when 0 at Yankee Stadium steps j €adoff man Jim Gilliam ‘Ditch, hto the batters’ box to face er Vie Raschi, on, © 8F€ some facts to chew mee Dodgers are a decisively Was ba fam than the one which enth ey nosed out in the sev- hava pure last season. The Yanks though ade no such improvement, F they have not slid down- _at the (gcPtibly either. Let’s look Roy gp ceers’ improvement. big I ampanella, in his sixth « .-99Ue season since making Mcrow-delayed debut, has Sluccee” i full bloom as a super- the Sai Alread y recognized . as phe 4 Modern defensive catch- hf Wee Now the kind of one San ty, ecking crew at bat who Uke a Series upside down. Dlode Snider has this year ex- fielg, Ks Mto the game’s top out- lefties goR® Who will clout the Car} Boll as the righties. through Uurillo, who staggered Uecessfyy -247 last year, had a throya, “tied a 1952 slump Made, .* hitless Series, has iS hay; ramatic comeback and _ "8 his best year. Remem- Dodgers chane JACKIE ROBINSON ber, just ONE hit by him could have turned the ‘52 Series around several times. With his -timing and confiderice back, can anyone conceive of Hodges go- ing through another such Series? Jim Gilliam has infused new speed, leadoff skill, infield de- fense and a switch hitting bat into: the lineup, thereby also creating deeper reverse strength and enabling key regulars to be rested this year for a change. te Sd * Last Year the Dodgers shap- ed up as the better hitting, field- ing and base running team, put the Yanks were given a decisive edge in pitching, especially with the rock crusher, Allie Reynolds, a decisive figure in every recent Series victory. This pitching edge barely pulled the Yanks through. The Dodgers’ pitching staff is clearly better. Carl Erskine at 26 has become a topgrade ace. Russ Meyer, a veteran winner, has been added. The only Dodg- er on the entire team to have a poorer season than 1952 has been Joe Black and his defection has been made up for in the sensa- tional mid-season development of sinker ball Clem Labine into an unfailing relief ace of the Joe Page, Jim Konstanty of 1950 — Joe Black of 1952 type. (Don't count Black out this year either. Still young and_ strong, OL’s Rookie of the Year has been giv- ing increasing signs of recover- ing form). ‘ “These are a lot of positive de- velopments. This writer has seen and talking to all the Dodger . A hi Yankees A pend run play backfired in the second game of the ae Nkees: Ph; © Dodgers when sliding Hank.Baver was tagged out by ry es good ‘orld Series teamis headed toward the World Series. This is the first time | have seen the team imp#tiently - looking forward to the Series, and remember, these are mature professionals, not kids given to giddy false optimism. In addition to the improve- ments mentioned, the Dodgers also field three of the game’s top stars in Pewee Reese, Jackie Rob- inson, and Billy Cex! In the Ebbets Field press box as the Dodgers powered their way to 41 wins and only 9 defeats since the All-Star break to sear Milwaukeee’s hopes, I heard one veteran baseball observer say in a measured way “This is the greatest baseball team I have seen since the Yanks of 1937. A little more pitching and | would have no hesitation in saying the greatest, period.” * * * A look at the comparative bat- ting figures shows this is to be one of the all-time powerhouse outfits, with a big edge in what _ was once the Yanks’ monopoly, the home run. Taking the eight regulars who will go into the Series, we find the Dodgers have a home run clout- : ing advantage over the Yanks of 156 to 95. Three Dodgers have shit more homers than the Yanks top man. In runs batted ‘in, that vital statistic, the Dodgers have three men already over the 100 mark in Campanello, Snider and Hodges. The Yanks have only Berra with- in hailing distance of 100. In fact, the Dodgers have a chance of adding Furillo and Robinson to that trio. Only the Yanks of ‘37 ever had five regulars over the 100 rbi mark. No National Lea-. gue team has done if. If you’re a stickler for batting averages, a direct position - by position comparison at this date shows the Dodgers with a 7-1 edge. Anyway you look at it, the Dodg- ers have it easily over the Yanks at bat. By season’s end they may rate first or second as the hit- tingest team of all time. This kind of explosive power is sel- dom contained in a World Series, even by a good pitching staff. Briefly: throwing base running into the pot—this unusual Brook- lyn club has an amazihg 73 to 26 margin*over the Yanks in stolen bases. It is the fastest as well as the hardest hitting team in base- ball. 52 World Series between the Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson after lle Rizzuta swung and missed on attempted hit and run play. nReneee ene erern Ls Lema EL FU SEWRERE in this issue you’ll see a letter from a weight- lifting enthusiast taking the PT to task for assuming that Doug Hepburn would have. picked up an Olympic gold medal for Can- ada at Helsinki. The writer ex- presses his belief that Hepburn at that period would not have beaten John Davis, over whom he triumphed at Stockholm. . As the letter-writer opines, I am no expert on weight-lifting. Consequently, I’m willing to con- cede that his observations are probably correct and that I was likely wrong in thinking that Hepburn in 1952. could have equailed or come close to the records he set in 1953. On one point, however, I re- fuse to budge. I wrote that ‘‘the Americans wanted to win so des- perately that they protested Hep- burn’s ‘snatch’ but officials re- jected the unsportsmanlike squawk.” Letter-writer Frank Coller ar- gues that protests are a part of the sport of weight-lifting (some- thing like the protests againsts umpires’ decisions in baseball, I gather). ‘‘The quality of sports- manship doesn’t enter into it, un- less, of. course, you protest un- necessarily,” says Coller. “Since your writer did not witness the lift he cannot know the motive for protest.” , ‘ It seems to me that Coller’ is overlooking the politics of the meeting at Stockholm, and is crediting the Americans with’ a better brand of sportsmanship | than they have displayed on pre- vious occasions when competing against Soviet athletes. Prior to the Olympic Games leading Yankee officials coined the unsportsmanlike slogan: “Beat _ 42? the Russians at any .cost +: Further evidenee of the Ameri- ean desire to bring the ‘“‘cold war” into the realm of sports is found in the press stories eabled back home from Stockholm. Hep- burn, no politician, evidently was taken in by the American propa- ganda to a certain extent. There was the fantastic story ‘of the ‘‘mystery sniff” which the Russians gave Doug and which he said helped him ‘win. On his return to Vancouver, Hepburn now says he is fairly certain it was a bottle containing ammonia. An English coach had previously given him a bottle of ammonia to sniff, but it was pretty weak stuff. So a Russian coach let him take a sniff of the, bottle used by the Soviet lifters. “It was powerful stuff—tI really got a lift out of it,” said the Canadian. But the ‘‘mystery sniff” stories spread widely in the American press have done their work. The explanation, if printed at all in the U.S. press, will not be given prominence. So thousands of Americans (excluding weight-lift- ers) will continue to believe the Russians won unfairly, due. to some mysterious drug given to Hepburn which enabled him to beat their representative. dn this connection, many Americans still believe Japanese swimmers were. ‘‘doped” when they beat the- American splashers at Los An- geles in 1932, because ‘‘mysteri- ous whiff” stories were circulat- ed on that occasion, too, by the American press.) * Weight-lifting as a sport leaves me, cold, and Hepburn’s express- ed desire to become the strongest man in history seems to me a silly target to aim at. When he says that girls and weight-lifting don’t mix, I feel like yelling: “For heaven’s sake man, drop those weights and pick up a girl!” However, every man chooses his own goal, so why should I try to divert anyone from the straight and narrow path? Take a look at the picture above this column, showing a monkey aping the biceps-flexing antics of Leo Roberts of Montreal, the ‘‘world’s best developed man.” If the mon- key wants his descendants to look like that, who am I to stop him? (The monkey’s name, fit- tingly enough, is J. Fred Muggs.) PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 18, 1953 — PAGE 11 LILA LJ LA i ew UN Iimuullagee bs Ua ¥ ills tite, ab :