If Wishes Were Ballplayers

The baseball training season was just about over, and 16 major-league clubs were heading north for Opening Day next week. Was this the year when big-league play would finally pull itself out of the postwar doldrums? Oldtimers, looking back to more glamourous days, hoped so, but if it was, there had been no sign of it in six weeks of spring training.

Since World War II first disrupted the flow of young ballplayers up through the minors eight years ago, not a single slugging first-baseman had reached the majors. The dearth of new catchers was just as serious. There wasn't a hard-hitting catcher in either league or one who could whip the ball down to second-base with the authority of a Bill Dickey or a Mickey Cochrane.

No Use Kidding. Because the world champion Cleveland Indians had fewer weak spots than the rest, they were favorites to be the American League champions again. The Indians had been shrewder, and luckier, in filling another of baseball's great deficiencies: they had fresh pitching talent that could survive nine innings. They had big (6 ft. 3 1/2 in.) Gene Bearden, who won 20 and lost 7 last year, plus assorted ablebodied veterans. In Manager Lou Boudreau they also had the smartest, hardest-hitting shortstop in baseball.

The Boston Red Sox still had baseball's modern version of murderer's row, headed by slugging Outfielder Ted Williams. If the Sox could somehow develop pitchers like Cleveland's--or those of the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia A's-- they could make it a runaway.

The trouble with the Yankees was deeper. They had only two first-rank stars, Tommy Henrich and Joe DiMaggio, and both were slowing down. On top of that, DiMaggio's right heel had not healed to his satisfaction after last fall's operation for a bone spur. Said DiMag last week: "There's no use kidding anybody, my heel still hurts." Without the big guy, the Yankees would be in peril of the second division; even with him, they would be lucky to stay ahead of 86-year-old Connie Mack's young, ambitious Philadelphia Athletics.

The man whom shrewd baseball men were touting as the player to watch in 1949 was Cleveland's 25-year-old Negro centerfielder, Larry Doby. Speedster Doby showed plenty of promise last year until, toward the end of the season, pitchers made a discovery: a dust-off ball, thrown in an early inning, could upset Doby's stance for the rest of the day. Doby began to slam fewer clothesline drives to the fences. If he could learn to handle the treatment, baseballers thought he might even be another Joe DiMaggio.

Basemen & Bailing Wire. In the National League, there was such a shortage of outstanding individual talent that no less than six clubs had a fighting chance for the pennant. The Brooklyn Dodgers were sifting and resifting young farmhands in a frantic search for a first-baseman who could hit. The latest of a long list of aspirants: a big Irishman from the Dodgers' Montreal farm by the name of Chuck Connors.

The Boston Braves, 1948 pennant winners, would lean again on the strong right arm of Johnny Sain (TIME, April 11), the best pitcher to come along since V-J day. In other camps, managers were racking their brains to plug holes in their lineups. The New York Giants had Johnny Mize and some other fence-busters, but Manager Leo Durocher was willing to put a pricetag on Mize or almost anybody else if it would bring him pitching. There seemed to be no eager bidders. No one had any marketable pitchers, and burly old (36) Johnny Mize was a property of doubtful value. He could still slam the ball, but he had trouble covering ground in the field.

The Pittsburgh Pirates had climbed into the first division last year, with the help of bailing wire and Manager Billy Meyer; they still needed help at first and third. In St. Louis, the Cardinals had Stan Musial, now generally conceded to be the most valuable player in the game; they were in the position of hoping Stan would be enough.

Strangely enough, the playing-field doldrums hadn't been matched at the turnstiles. This season, just as last, the club owners confidently expected a steady, merry clicking.

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