Word: pennant
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...like old times-a subway series, the Yanks and the Dodgers again, scrapping for the baseball championship of the world. But in Brooklyn at least, fans had a feeling that, this once, things might be different. Seven times since the turn of the century the Dodgers, winning a pennant, had lost the World Series. Five times the Yankees had knocked them off. This once, Dodger fans figured to be backing a winner...
...record book bore them out. With an astonishing show of early foot, the Dodgers had made a runaway of the National League pennant race. Their pitchers had faltered in the stretch, but they were rested now. In the field they were sure and sharp. At bat they were loaded. Their right-handed sluggers could murder left-handed pitchers-and the Yankees' best (Ford and Byrne) were lefties...
...Yanks, on the other hand, had barely limped home. They looked less like pennant winners than any Yankee team in years. Their pitchers were worn out from working overtime. Half their fielders were held together by adhesive tape. Even so, every bookmaker operating a safe distance from the shores of the Gowanus Canal chalked them up as favorites. Why? Well, there was that Yankee habit of winning the money games. And then there was Casey Stengel, who could always be counted on to outmaneuver the opposition...
...park. The big batters are almost always hitting away; their strength is seldom wasted in sacrifices. Given a well-tagged ball, anyone on the team will gamble and go for extra bases. If Smokey Alston worries about any single defect, it is Dodger nonchalance. His team won the pennant too soon, coasted into autumn carelessly dulling the fine edge that made them champions. Then, there is always that oldtime habit of losing to the Yanks in the series...
Captain Pee Wee Reese is the great shortstop that a pennant-winning club usually depends on. He is also a dangerous and daring base runner, a deadly batter when working the hit-and -run. Teaming up with him at third, Jackie Robinson also makes up in hotheaded drive what he has lost in speed. He is still an excellent glove man, and once on base, can still give a pitcher the fits. At bat, he likes to stay back in the box and step into an outside pitch. Pitchers who can keep the ball high and across the hands...