Everybody Up!

There was this baseball fan, see, and one night he had a dream. The New York Mets were leading the National League, and the Los Angeles Angels were on top of the American League. "Crazy," said the fan when he woke up. "Crazy," agreed his psychiatrist, who was also a baseball fan. "But you know what? I had the same dream."

For a few brief moments last week, it was no dream. The Mets, with a record of 11 victories and 7 defeats, led the National League by a half-game, and the Angels (13 wins, 5 losses) clung to a similarly narrow margin in the American League. Of course, it was only spring training; the regular big-league season starts April 8. And down there in Florida and Arizona, which are practically in the Southern Hemisphere anyway, things are inclined to be upside down.

Where else could the San Francisco Giants, champions of the National League, get beaten by their own Tacoma, Wash., farm club? Where else could Pitcher Don Drysdale, who won 25 games last year for the Los Angeles Dodgers, give up six walks, 20 hits and 13 runs, hit one batter, throw a wild pitch, and lose two games in a row? Where else could the Mets split a two-game series with the World Champion New York Yankees, who, by the way, were playing .350 ball with 7 wins, 13 losses? Where indeed? At least, that was the consensus in Las Vegas last week, where oddsmakers refused to take any of it seriously, quoted the Yankees and the Dodgers as short-priced favorites to battle it out in the 1963 World Series next October. How the bookies see it:

AMERICAN LEAGUE New York 1-2 Detroit 8-1 Baltimore 15-1 Minnesota 15-1 Los Angeles 15-1 Chicago 25-1 Cleveland 25-1 Boston 300-1 Washington 300-1 Kansas City 300-1

NATIONAL LEAGUE Los Angeles 11-5 San Francisco 5-2 Cincinnati 6-1 St. Louis 6-1 Milwaukee 8-1 Pittsburgh 10-1 Philadelphia 40-1 Chicago 100-1 New York 300-1 Houston 500-1

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