Word: dimag
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Still in the dugout at week's end was such costly talent as ailing Clouter Charlie Keller, Pitcher Bob Porterfield and Second Baseman Snuffy Stirnweiss, not to mention DiMag himself. Watching their understudies paste the ball lopsided, some Yankee veterans seemed almost resigned to bench-warming. To cap it all, the Yanks were getting fine pitching: Vic Raschi and Ed Lopat had won three each...
...DiMaggio hobbled out of Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital on crutches one day last week and snapped at reporters: "Leave me alone . . . you guys are driving me batty." It was not like the usually soft-spoken DiMag, but the Yankees' centerfielder had cause for being testy: it seemed possible he might never play again...
...nursed his right heel, tender after an operation for a bone spur last fall. The heel got worse instead of better. In exhibition games in Texas recently he tried putting some pressure on it, and the pain made sport-page headlines from Maine to Mexico. Last week, while DiMag was flown to Baltimore for diagnosis, the press speculated on 1) whether he would be out of the line-up for a few weeks or forever and 2) whether the New York Yankees would pay him $90,000 for a season of sitting on the bench...
...trouble with the Yankees was deeper. They had only two first-rank stars, Tommy Henrich and Joe DiMaggio, and both were slowing down. On top of that, DiMaggio's right heel had not healed to his satisfaction after last fall's operation for a bone spur. Said DiMag last week: "There's no use kidding anybody, my heel still hurts." Without the big guy, the Yankees would be in peril of the second division; even with him, they would be lucky to stay ahead of 86-year-old Connie Mack's young, ambitious Philadelphia Athletics...
...tossed out a Yankee at the plate with a good throw from center field. Did Groth look like an heir apparent? In spite of a mine-run performance that day, he handled himself with confidence; to sportwriters he seemed a good candidate for rookie-of-the-year. DiMag reserved judgment: "I got to see him do more than he did today...