The Base Thief

The ball game was in the 13th inning, and the Los Angeles Dodgers were still locked tight in a 3-3 tie with the Houston Colts. In the Dodger dugout. Manager Walt Alston issued crisp orders to his lead-off batter, Shortstop Maurice Morning Wills--"If you get on, run.''

Wills needed no urging. Drawing a walk, he streaked for second on the first pitch, skidded in safely on his belly a split second before the Colt catcher's throw. Three pitches later, he stole third as well.

this time piling in under the bag with a neat hook slide. The rest was easy. A Dodger batsman lifted a pop fly to short centerfield, and Wills came scooting home --again beating the throw--with the run that not only won the game, but for the first time this year put the Dodgers alone at the top of the National League.

In the era of the home run, Maury Wills is a refreshing throwback to an older, and in some ways more exciting time when ball games were won or lost by speed on the bases. In 1915 the late great Ty Cobb set the major league season record by stealing 96 bases for Detroit, and legend has it that "the Georgia Peach'' filed a knife-edge on his steel spikes to enforce his belief that "the base paths belong to the runner." The 29-year-old Wills has the same determined speed--if not the same temperament. With more than half of the season to go. he already has 34 stolen bases to his credit, seems certain to top the record for active players of 56 steals, set in 1959 by Chicago's Luis Aparicio. So swift and so canny is Wills that he has been caught trying to steal only five times this year, and the experts give him a chance to top even Cobb's record. Says Alston: "He's the greatest base stealer I've seen in the majors.'' Green Light for Go. The son of a Washington, D.C.. Baptist preacher. Wills spent nine years rattling around the Dodger farm system before the parent team brought him up to stay in 1959.

Though he was a good fielder and had a fair batting eye, he was no long-ball hitter. It took him the better part of three seasons and 1,675 times at bat to hit his first major league home run. But in 1960, his first full year in the majors. Wills stole so many bases (50) that the Dodgers' front office presented him with the second-base sack from their home park.

The performance put him far ahead of such former Dodger stars as Pee Wee Reese (30 bases in 1952) and Jackie Robinson (37 bases in 1949). Last year Manager Alston held null back by letting him run only on signals--Wills still stole 35 bases to lead the league. This year, says Wills, "I have the green light to run when I please.'1 And with a respectable .269 batting average (74 hits, all but eleven of them singles), the light goes on often.

Speed is only part of it. More important is the jump he gets by knowing precisely when to take off--at the instant the pitcher decides to throw to the plate. Most pitchers betray their decision by a subtle shift of their shoulders, a jerk of the head, or some other quirk. Wills knows, for example, that one Houston pitcher leans ever so slightly toward the plate just before he goes for the batter. "From the time he starts to lean to the time he goes into his delivery,'' says Wills, "I've taken two extra steps." He wastes no time trying to taunt a pitcher--"I don't wanna be a jumpin' jack. If I rile those pitchers, they'll be more anxious to get me than the batter." Even so. says Dodger Vice President Fresco Thompson, Wills's mere presence on base "can raise the batting average of the man behind him in the line-up by 20 or 30 points." Explosion of Dust. It can also be considerably disconcerting to opposing infielders. Some runners start their slide halfway down the base path, thus presenting a good target for the tag. Not Wills.

"I wait until the last minute, when I'm about five feet away," he says, and when he barrels into the base in an explosion of dust, no one knows which hand or elusive toe will reach out to nick the bag. Yet he goes in for none of the spikes-high, chop-up-the-baseman kind of slide that marked Ty Cobb's style (Cobb once received 13 threatening letters from angry fans after slashing Philadelphia's famed "Home Run" Baker). In his major league career, the mild-mannered Wills has never hurt an opposing player.

Wills's most dazzling performance came in New York recently in a game with the Mets. Four times in that single game he stole second base--though only three of the steals went into the record books. His first time on base he stole second, but the umpire nullified the play because the Dodger batter had interfered with the catcher. Wills did not argue. He simply trotted back to first and stole again two pitches later.

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