Yankees are slipping, * Pipe » but always By LESTER RODNEY Aon week We gave our gen- D Impression of the Brooklyn Odgers of 1953 and found them the oy oramatically improved over as Club which was beaten in the Se €nth game of last year’s World Tes. Now we record our first ae reporting impressions of ‘ Yanks, and then go on to Mpare the two team’s infields. There is general agreement in € baseball world, even among eee fans, that this Yankee re ie not a truly great team, of th 0es not stack up with some € all powerful Yankee teams of the past. ae yet it is obviously good Beate to breeze through to the : ant, fifth straight for canny Sey Stengel’s outfit. How much Nt pus due to the rest of the to gue “dying” beneath it is hard einige. But it is clear that the can Re once again the Ameri- ae “Eague’s best, and if they He improved over last year’s Bhs they haven't slipped too : ealy either. They will be ing Tmidable foe as always, giv- Nothing away. are makes them tick? After Sith ing them many times this t ae? I would names these fac- % “ * Thou Plenty of strong pitching. Sh Raschi and Lopat have ply slipped into the once UD with category, they still come fan the big games when need- form * should be in their top Deana least for one Series ap- did ples each. Allie Reynolds . ikaw of game saving early Cisive year and could be a de- rie relief Pitcher again in the 8. Whitey Ford. is a strong Yo * ‘ied Winner, Johnny Sain has smart asa starter earlier, a ald - Pot reliever later, McDon- Ditchers, Kuzava have been good acon Fefuse, d Sti j hil Rizzuto, team key, has to slip back too much and and 's the glue in the infield, personification of the SUperiority of Yankee 8 Years, recent YOGI 3. Larry Berra, top catcher in * the league by a good margin and solid runs driver in, gives the team the consistent long ball. Then there is Mickey Mantle, avery dangerous hitter though he has not yet burned up the league as expected, partly due to what looks more and more like susceptibility to leg injury. Gene Woodling is a slashing, hard hit- ting outfielder, Hank Bauer is topflight all around, and a fourth outfielder of the calibre of Irv Noren gives the Yanks maneuv- erability. However, if you compare this Yankee team with last year’s Yankee team, you would have to say that it doesn’t shape up quite as good. : * ak * Last year the Yanks went into the Series with an overpowering trio of class pitchers in Reynolds, Raschi and Lopat. It is. doubt- ful if any .or all of them can come back effectively with short rest this year. And Ford, who ordinarily would rate as taking up the slack, and possibly pitch- ing twice, is of the southpaw breed the Dodger team has been murder against. Neither War- ren Spahn nor Curt Simmons could hold them in their last starts. If you peg the rest of the team exactly as good as last year, which is roughly true, since the personnel hasn’t changed, and except for McDougald’s ~better hitting everybody has held more or less to form, then the slightly more uncertain pitching means the Yanks are not going into this year’s setto as well fixed as last year. This is my impression. * * * I give the Dodgers an edge over the Yanks in the infield. Here is the man to man com- parison picture: FIRST BASE. Nobody, not even the most rabid Yankee fan, will deny the Dodgers the edge at first base will Gil Hodges over Joe Collins. Not only is Gil the finest gloveman in the game at the initial’ sack, but he provides BERRA dangerous the long range punch which the bag is supposed to produce. He is batting .307 compared to Col- lins’ .269. He has exploded 31 homers compared to Collins’ 14 and has driven in 119 runs, to Collins’ 44, SECOND BASE. At second, the issue is closer. Do you like rookie Gilliam or Billy Martin? Billy’s decisive edge -over Gil- liam is in homers,’ with 14 to 6, but the Dodger youngster is not the home run type but the line drive type, as his lead of both league’s hitters in three base hits shows. Martin carried a margin of seven runs batted in as this was written, 66 to 59. In the field I would give Martin the shade in steadiness and doubleplay piv- ot experience, though Gilliam will make plays that knock fans out of their seats. Gilliam, however, has a 31 point edge in batting average and has also drawn the most walks of anybody going. Taking this to- gether with his greater speed— 15 stolen bases to Martin’s five —I give him a slight all round edge over Martin. You can’t blink 30 points in batting average when everything else is’so close. SHORTSTOP. Those two splen- did veteran shortstops, Phil Riz- zuto and Pee-wee Reese, get a pushoff in this rating. The mar- vellous little Phil has 10 points on Peewee in batting average at the moment, .278 to .268. Pee- wee is much the heavier threat to hit the long ball, with 11 home runs to two, and has also knock- ed in five more runs, 55 to 50, and has stolen 19 bases to Phil’s three. Both have lost a little in the field. I don’t think, consid- ering everything, that Iam giving the Yanks any the worst of it in calling them even this year. In fact, I expect a big squawk from Brooklyn. But it’s hard to rate ANYBODY over Rizzuto, even the 35-year-old Rizzuto, who'll still come up with the’ big play, the magic move, the astounding bunt... the rally killing double- play, like nobody else, not even Mr. Shortstop of the National Lepgue. THIRD BASE. It may seem fantastic to give anybody an edge over Billy Cox, when the man every big league player, man- ager and writer will call the fin- est infielder in the game is also enjoying a .309 hitting year, lead- ing his opponent, Gil McDougald by five points in average. Yet | give third to the Yankee because he carries the heavier run . producing stick, having knocked in 80 runs to Billy’s 41 though each has hit 10 homers. True, McDougald has played 124 games to Cox's 82, but durability and brittleness are also part of the overall picture for compari- sons. And while Billy is the one and only magician of the glove at third, Gil has come on solid- ly as a very fine fielder, cutting down the importance of that edge. Of course, season long statis- tics and fielding appraisals help form: a judgment for all season comparison and still can mean little in a ps sansa erga re one player may & er another cold. But still they mean something and you have to start somewhere. in the infield it’s the Dodg- eo in Hodges and Cox have the two top defensive perform- ers at their posts in the game, and overall, considering fielding, hitting and speed, one of Se great. infields in the game’s his- tory. nt te Bert NE more story on Doug Hep- burn’s big lift at Stockholm and then I’m through. This yarn, by Eric Whitehead, appeared in the Vancouver Province of Sep- tember 15 and may have been overlooked by many people who do not read that paper regularly. “The future world champ had just hoisted his record 371 pounds in the clean and press and the big fellow flicked the sweat off his forehead as he took a towel from‘ his coach, a volunteer Eng- lishman named Ab Murray. ““Nice going, Doug,’ said Ab softly. ‘The Americans won’t like that.’ “Doug nodded, dabbed at the perspiration, and Murray moved off toward a nearby drinking fountain. , “At that moment another fig- ure moved up to Hepburn . It was Bob Hoffman, coach and boss of the U.S. lifting team, a seven- man crew headed by the great champion of the past 15 years, John Davis. . “‘T knew he was watching mie,’ related Doug last night at an in- formal family gathering to cele- brate his homecoming. ‘And I knew, as we all did, that he was getting pretty uneasy about the way things were going.’ “The way things were going was that the U.S. needed a first and second in the heavyweight - class to clinch the team champion- ship—and Hepburn looked a cer- tainty for that coveted first place. “Hoffman, also boss of the big York Barbell Company of York, Pennsylvania, sidled close to Hep- burn. “‘Say Hepburn,’ he murmur- ed softly, sardonically, -‘look. We can’t compete against a hu- man derrick. It cost me $10,000 to bring my team over here. This sure means a lot to me. How much does it mean to you?’ ‘Hoffman paused and waited. Hepburn stopped dabbing at the sweat, flashed a momentary startl- ed look, hesitated, then put down the towel and walked away. “Twenty minutes later, the hall rocked with a thunderous roar as for the first time in history a Canadian became the official world heavyweight lifting cham- pion, and Bob Hoffman skulked disconsolately off into the Swed- ish gloom.” a 1k u Some 30 years ago Luis Angel Firpo packed his toothbrush and boxing trunks and headed north from Argentina for the lush, greenback pastures of New York. He looked pretty clumsy in the ring against trial horse Bill Bren- nan, but managed to club his man down in the twelfth round. Then he disposed of ex-champ Jess Willard (big Jess simply got tired and sat down for the count) and was thrown in against Jack Demp- sey. As you'll remember, that turned out to be the most furious title brawl in ring history, with Firpo coming off the floor six times in the first frame, then con- necting with a right and knock- ing Dempsey clean out of* the ring. The champ recovered and turned the Wild Bull of the Fampas into a quiet little pile of heifer-dust in the second stan- Za. Now we have another Argen- tine heavyweight, 238 - pound heavyweight Edgardo Romero, shooting for a crack at the title which Firpo came so close to taking home with him. Unde- feated in his last 26 bouts, Rom- ero looked good here as he pol- ished off Charley Kalani in less than a round. A scrap between Romero and Earl Walls would draw a good audience here. Both boys pack potent punches and are willing _o step in and mix it, and both are on the upgrade. # * * Pretty brunette Marie Depree, 16-year-old South Burnaby high school student, set a Canadian junior discuss record at UBC stadium last Saturday. Her toss was measured at 130 feet, inches short of a senior record. % * * Seventh Son of a Seventh Son Department: Dodgers to win the Series; Tom Fool to whip Native Dancer; Randy Turpin to beat Bobo Olson. PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 25, 1953 — PAGE 11 SPAR RR TTR rae ST oe me so st. ie ne i a eal ite ecient allie 10d |) niente Mieaeia hills, | 11. , |. bal Mi) uted Dua nemnbelediielied dle AAT Teer rT RN =a Pts in “, | Saar ie Py errr ae —d ee