Batter Up!

Crooner Bing Crosby and 29,427 other baseball fans shivered in their topcoats. Said Bing: "This ain't fit weather . . . they ought to throw put a football." The thing that Rip ("Blooper Ball") Sewell tossed at the Chicago Cubs may have looked like a football but it wasn't, and Crosby's Pirates (Bing owns about 20% of the Pittsburgh club) won their opening game, 1-0.

Even more impressive was Cincinnati's human skeleton, 6 ft.-5 in. Ewell Blackwell. He looked remarkably like the National League's best pitcher, putting the mighty St. Louis Cardinals to bed with only three hits. In the American League, Detroit's curly-haired pride & joy, Lefty Hal Newhouser, began earning his $60,000-a-year salary first 'time out, letting the Browns down with just four hits and no sign of a run.

For the most part the hitters were ahead of the pitchers. Hank Greenberg, the Pirates' new home-run specialist, hit one the second day, and pretty soon everybody was doing it. The iffy New York Giants clouted six in one game against the Dodgers. The Reds' Eddie Miller, a fine shortstop but not much of a hitter, busted four in six days. The Boston Red Sox' third-baseman, Eddie Pellagrini, was ordered to bunt and socked a homer over the fence. Said he, after trotting shamefaced around the bases: "I'm sorry ... I just don't know my own strength."

The established batting stars ranged from medium hot to ice cold. Temperamental Ted Williams, helping the Red Sox off to another flying start, had trained himself to hit to left field against the opposition's Williams-shift to deep right. The Cardinals' great clutch hitter, Stan Musial, was having early-season trouble connecting with curves.

The surprises, as usual, popped out of Branch Rickey's Brooklyn surprise box. First, a last-minute switch nudged aging Arky Vaughan off third base, and gave the job to scrawny John ("Spider") Jorgensen; the rookie from Montreal batted in six runs in one game. Then Rickey announced that soft-spoken Burt Shotton, 62, would succeed exile Leo ("The Lip") Durocher as manager of the Dodgers.

Wholly unlike Durocher, grey-haired Burt Shotton had been thrown out of only two games in 39 years of playing, coaching and managing. Once before, with the Browns, he had pinch-hit as Rickey's "Sunday manager" (the day the boss stays home). Shotton would manage the Dodgers on faith, without a written contract. There was no official word on salary, but everybody knew that it was far less than the $60,000 Durocher would have drawn for the job. And there was little doubt that Shotton would step aside once Durocher was back in grace.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.