Sport: TNT & Trumps

The experts, as usual, disagreed. American League partisans picked the tired Tigers, but admitted that it would probably take six games for Hank Greenberg's big bat and Detroit's better balanced pitching staff to do the job. National Leaguers, viewing the 1945 World Series in the same fuzzy light, stoutly insisted that it was a six-game set-up for the younger, faster Chicago Cubs. It seemed more likely that since both clubs had barely squeaked into the series, they would have to play out the full string of seven before either one could win four.

As it turned out, the players themselves —many of them fugitives from the minor leagues—showed neither ability nor ambition to finish it off in a hurry. They made bush-league mistakes in the field (in a single game three pop flies were allowed to fall for safe hits), swooned in the face of first-rate pitching, and did nothing more invigorating than tilt their eyebrows at umpires' decisions.

For the customers who jampacked Detroit's Briggs Stadium and Chicago's Wrigley Field (at a $7.20 top), it was a strictly second-rate show. But the people kept coming, and the total take reached an alltime high of $1,328,777. The players' pool promised a juicy cut for both winners & losers.

Bran Flakes & Kisses. The temperature was a chilly 46° when the Tigers and Cubs squared off for their big tea party last week. What followed was enough to give any big-league manager chills & fever. No exceptions were Chicago's banjo-strumming Charlie ("Jolly Cholly") Grimm and Detroit's pug-nosed Irishman, Steve O'Neill. And what went for them went for their wives: plump, chestnut-haired Lillian Lyle Grimm and dark, buxom Mary Boland O'Neill.

Jolly Cholly, an extrovert who exudes cheer and carries a banner of hilarity, inwardly is one of baseball's greatest worriers, a man who doesn't sleep well when things go bad. He slept fine after the first game. Solid Steve O'Neill, who does his worrying on the ball field and leaves it there, just waddled home to the Detroit-Leland Hotel and settled silently behind cigar smoke to read the horrible headlines. Sample (from the Detroit Free Press): "Tigers Wail, oo o o O O O Oh."

Steve's pride & joy, Pitcher Hal Newhouser, was blasted out in the third inning. The old bones in his outfield, average age 34, creaked and groaned. Greenberg & Co. looked silly against Hank Borowy's careful pitching. Score: Chicago 9, Detroit 0.

After the second game Mary O'Neill heard her man hum a few snatches: "All I can promise is a cozy little cottage. . . ." As usual, win or lose, Steve had bran flakes with peaches for dinner. But Grimm had a trump to play. For ten days he had rested Claude Passeau's ancient and ailing arm. After the third game, Lillian Grimm's floor-pacer passed a restful night.

Against Passeau's sinkers and sliders, nary a Tiger reached second base. For the first time in 39 years, the World Series had a one-hitter. Score: Chicago 3, Detroit 0.