Sport: Mid-Season

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(See front cover)

Baseball superstition says that the team which is leading each major league on July 4 will come out ahead at the end of the season and play in the World Series. What lends weight to this superstition is that, during the past 25 years, it has been substantiated by fact two-thirds of the time. As July 4 approached last week, the New York Giants topped the National League two games ahead of their nearest rival, the Chicago Cubs. In the American League, the New York Yankees were so placed that Detroit could not overtake them for first place before the fateful Fourth. The rest of the teams were strung out sufficiently close together in both leagues to make it likely that 1934 would be one baseball year when the July 4 superstition would fall to the ground.

In the National League, St. Louis was only two games behind the Cubs. With Jerome ("Dizzy") Dean and his younger brother, Paul, two pitchers who can be counted on to win most of their games, all the club seemed to need was one more of the same calibre. Last week it tried to make up that deficiency by purchasing aging Dazzy Vance from the League's tail-enders, the Cincinnati Reds. The Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Braves were still in striking position behind the Cardinals. Brooklyn, which last week won its first game after losing eight in a row, and the Philadelphia Phillies, who have good batters but poor pitchers, were almost bracketed together, a notch ahead of Cincinnati.

Even more exciting than the games in the National League this year have been disturbances of the sort that usually arise from the tension of a close race. Last month the Cardinals' Manager Frankie Frisch exchanged words and blows with portly Umpire Charley Rigler during a game against Chicago. League authorities fined both $100, first time in recent years that an umpire has been so disciplined. A week earlier, the first individual strike in baseball history took place when Pitcher Dizzy Dean refused to play unless the club upped Brother Paul's salary from $3,000 to $5,000. After one day St. Louis owners persuaded Paul to compromise.

The Chicago Cubs have been more troublesome than the Cardinals. Early in June Manager Grimm and Shortstop Jurges were fined $50 and $25 respectively for misbehaving. A few days later Jurges, Root, English and W. Herman were all ejected from the same game. Another day English was fined $25.