Baseball: Old Potato Face

(See Cover)

It was a ritual to which he had become accustomed and which he accepted, unwillingly but gracefully. Grouped around the desk in the Baltimore clubhouse were half a dozen reporters for the usual postmortem. They watched Hank Bauer reduce an empty beer can to tin foil with one quick crunch of his hammy fist. "They gotta catch us," Bauer announced. "And if we keep winning, they can't, can they?" Silence. "But Hank," somebody wanted to know, "is the long summer beginning to get to your players?"

Bauer's mashed-potato face flushed crimson....