Big-Leaguer

Apart from the work of sensational young pitcher Bob Turley,* nothing very good happened to the Baltimore Orioles last year. A lot happened to Baltimore's Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro. who helped to get the Orioles their big-league franchise--and what happened to Tommy was all bad: his son was involved in a teen-age vice scandal, his wife admitted receiving $11,000 from a city contractor, and the contractor was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the city. For a time, both D'Alesandro and the Orioles were flat on their backs: the ball club in the cellar and the mayor in the hospital with a nervous collapse. Eventually, little Tommy D'Alesandro jumped out of bed and into his elevator shoes to run for a third term. Last week the Baltimore Orioles were down in the basement again, but Baltimore's Tommy D'Alesandro, making his 22nd electoral campaign, came through with a 1.000 record: for the 22nd time, he won.

Skinning Coon. Democrat D'Alesandro faced big-league competition from the Republican mayoralty candidate: Samuel Hopkins, 41, a lawyer and businessman who was born on a Maryland farm, studied at the university founded by his great-great-uncle, Johns Hopkins. Sam Hopkins' cowlicked hair and easy personality seemed so appealing that Democratic District Boss Jack Pollack complained: "He wasn't born in a log cabin and he doesn't wear a coonskin cap, but somehow he manages to give the impression that he was and does." Some of Republican Hopkins' support ers enthusiastically rushed off in the wrong direction, however, creating a rus tic caricature of a campaign around his homespun look. Ten teams of G.O.P. cam paign workers lined up along street curbs to display rhymed signs advertising Sam Hopkins, like Burma-Shave. An octette of Republican ladies, wearing coonskin caps, trooped around town chanting a six-stanza ode to Sam Hopkins, written to the tune of Davy Crockett. Sample stanza:

Born on a farm in the new country, One-room school for his ABC, Admitted to the bar at 25, Honest Abe legend come alive. Sammy, Sa-a-ammy Hopkins, Grass roots son is he.

Outshining the Sun. Tommy D'Alesandro's slogan was: "Elect a big-league mayor!" His campaign cards simply listed the Orioles' home-game schedule and the claim: "50 Years of Progress in Eight Years." For his first two terms, he claimed a lot of progress: 87 new schools, firehouses and other facilities, 1,400 miles of new streets, 21,947 new street lights. His son had been acquitted of all charges, and Tommy D'Alesandro shrugged off the old scandals. "No one," he said modestly, "is infallible. I haven't done everything right."

He made the coon-fur fly when the morning and evening Baltimore Sun, for the first time in this century, decided to support the Republican mayoral candi date. The Sun attacked "complacency, bossism and corruption" in Baltimore, but Tommy D'Alesandro gleefully offered an other explanation for the switch: Sam Hopkins works as secretary and assistant treasurer of the Fidelity & Deposit Co., controlled by Harry Crawford Black, who is also principal owner of the A. S. Abell Co., publisher of the Sun. When the Sun came out for Hopkins, D'Alesandro stalked over to the editorial offices personally to deliver his biting reply: "Nepotism."

Thereafter he brushed off Hopkins as "a glorified copy boy," pitched his scorn at the Sun's twelve editorial writers. They became, to their surprise, a major campaign issue as "the nine old men in the ivory tower" and "the cowardly nine residing in the dark corners of Baltimore county"--meaning the suburbs. At precinct meetings and campaign crab feasts, beaming Tommy D'Alesandro poked fun at the Sun. "No newspaper,'' cried he, "will boss me."

As a boy, he recalled, he hawked the Sun in the streets for a penny, and "Now, it's full of bull, and it costs five cents." At crowded Workingmen's Hall in his native East Baltimore, D'Alesandro cockily proclaimed: "Editorials don't win elections, but paved streets win elections. Are your streets paved? Is your garbage being collected?" Roared the crowd: "Yea, Tommy!" Last week on election day, street-paving overcame the press: by 25,000 votes. Tommy D'Alesandro and his garbage collectors eclipsed Sam Hopkins and the Sun.

* Who was witlessly traded to the Yankees at season's end, is now baseball's best (see SPORT).

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