Denouement

Another year of professional baseball reached its denouement. At the Polo Grounds, Manhattan, Manager McGraw and his "Giants" made their supremacy of the National League a mathematical certainty by banging out a 5-to-1 victory over Philadelphia. At Shibe Park, Philadelphia, the Washington "Senators" fattened their percentage at the expense of Manager Connie Mack's once-famed "Athletics," and lifted the American League pennant beyond the reach of the New York "Yankees" (1923 world's champions). For the first time in four years, the World's Series was thus rendered other than an all-New York affair.

The Giants' four years of plenty (a major league record) are chiefly asscribable to the shrewdness of John McGraw, their square-jawed manager, and to heavy financial backing. Not only has McGraw the acumen for constructing and lubricating a baseball machine but he has also been supplied with dollars sufficient to maintain a far-flung network of "scouts" on the lookout for fresh material; sufficient to purchase such material at any price.

In Washington's rise to championship heights is seen the work of Stanley Harris, 28-year-old manager, and of Walter Johnson, wizard pitcher (TIME Sept. 22).

Never before had the National Capital been the scene of a World's Series game.* Never before had famed Walter Johnson pitched in one.

At Baltimore, Md., the "Junior World's Series" was scheduled to start, between the Baltimore "Orioles" winners (a sixth successive year) of the International League, and the St. Paul "Saints," winners in the American Association. The Kansas City "Caseys" were 1923 junior champions.

*The two St. Louis teams are now the only nines of either Big League never to have won the right to play in a World's Series.