Sport: Exit Leo

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Chandler, onetime pork-barreling U.S. Senator from Kentucky, had indeed done little as baseball's chief of police except to treat baseball-club presidents to ice-cream sodas to demonstrate what plain, folksy and moral people they all were. He had once summed up his job to a newspaper reporter: "As baseball commissioner I'm compelled to spend the winters in Florida and attend baseball games during the summer. If there is a better job than that, I don't know about it." That was not the way his stern old predecessor Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis regarded the job. But the baseball owners had carefully picked Happy because he was no Landis. Said Timesman Daley: "Maybe this makes Chandler tougher than Landis. But I doubt it. Landis was always tough in an intelligent fashion."

What would happen to Leo Durocher? Whether he got his job back with the Dodgers next year depended on his own behavior for the rest of the year, and how well the Dodgers did without him. Said Rickey: "We'll see." One possibility: if the Dodgers don't take Leo back he might end up next spring as manager of MacPhail's New York Yankees. Despite their squabbles, Leo and Larry were two of a kind, and understand each other.