Sport: New Manager In Boston

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Boston is a town to give any baseball manager ulcers. It has the most temperamental players, the most critical fans and the most vitriolic sportwriters of any city in the baseball world. Manager Joe McCarthy, who won eight pennants in twelve years with the New York Yankees, gave up after his Red Sox, two years in succession, had wound up in second place. The Braves' Manager Billy Southworth, who won three pennants in a row with the St. Louis Cardinals, did a little better, won a pennant for Boston in 1948. But last week, after the Braves had lost by one run in 15 games and slipped back into the National League's second division, Southworth also threw in the towel.

To the baseball world, the resignation was no surprise. In the middle of the 1949 season, after weeks of wrangling among his players, Southworth, never quite recovered from the death of his son in a wartime B-29 crash, quit with a nervous breakdown. By this year, his successor had been picked: ex-Braves Rightfielder Tommy Holmes, 34, who was under training as manager of the Braves' Hartford (Conn.) farm club. When Billy Southworth, at 58, finally retired for good, Holmes was ready to step in. Said he: "It just happened sooner than I thought it would."