Last Innings

When the Cleveland Indians reached Detroit last week for a three-game series with the Tigers, they were met by hundreds of youngsters, swarming through the Union Depot, jeering "Cry Babies--Cry Babies!" At their hotel, the suffering base-bailers were further plagued by the strains of Rock-a-Bye Baby serenading them from the streets below.

All this to-do dated from last June, when a dozen petulant Indians stormed into the front office of the Cleveland club, wailed that Manager Oscar Vitt's scoldings got on their nerves, asked President Alva Bradley to fire him. Instead of spanking them, President Bradley coddled his pets, asked them please to grin & bear it for the rest of the season.

Grin & bear it they did--in the most extraordinary situation since Merkle neglected to touch second base. Last spring the Indians were generally written off as an also-ran in this year's American League pennant race. But, thanks to Pitcher Bob Feller and a pair of rookies, Lou Boudreau and Ray Mack, who made Cleveland's in field the hottest spot in baseball, the In dians found themselves, by mid-August, with a tight grip on first place.

Ever since their June rebellion, the Indians had practically ignored crusty old Manager Vitt. Behind closed doors, they made their own decisions, reputedly voted to have Vitt excluded, if they won the pennant, from a share of the World Series swag. While they took out their haughties on Vitt, the fans took it out on them. Everywhere they went, they were heckled. The "foreign press" (any writer outside Cleveland) dubbed them "Cry Babies." Rival teams sent them rubber panties, rattles, perambulators. When they went to bat, they were "boohooed" from their opponents' bench. Once they found a baby's bottle in their dugout.

Despite day-in, day-out razzing, the Indians were still in front last week--tied with the Tigers. Each team had won 85 games, lost 61. Each had eight more games to play--six of them against each other. To watch this croo-cial series, a sell-out crowd jampacked Detroit's Briggs Stadium. Del Baker's Tigers, a scrappy outfit, with three dependable pitchers and five players hitting over .300, had, despite their creaky infield, chugged along neck & neck with the Indians all summer -- fighting off the challenges of the Yankees and White Sox in the most exciting stretch run in the history of the American League.

Last week the Tigers and Indians went at one another tooth & nail. Detroit won the first game, 6-to-5. In the second, Schoolboy Rowe, hero of the Tigers' 1934 pennant victory, mauled the Indians, 5-to-0. Then, when dopesters were just about ready to concede the pennant to Detroit, the Indians, with Bob Feller pitching, scalped the Tigers, 10-to-5.

At week's end, fans still wondered who would face the Cincinnati Reds in next week's World Series: the Tigers, the Indians or the New York Yankees-- who still had a mathematical chance of coming through.

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