Word: southpaw
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...down to yes, with reservations. Now, 40 years later, both sportswriters and novelists seem to have fewer reservations. In Bernard Malamud's The Natural (TIME, Sept. 8, 1952), there was the mystical intimation that major-leaguers might even have souls. In Bang the Drum Slowly, Novelist Mark (The Southpaw) Harris modestly stays closer to the bag. Look, he says, they are human, and their hearts can hurt as much as a spiked foot...
...American League pennant contender in the Philadelphia Athletics. Then the Pennsylvania Supreme Court barred all the league jumpers from playing for him. Connie was probably the only man who did not believe the A's were through. He remembered a hard-drinking, eccentric southpaw pitcher named Rube Waddell, then dividing his time between baseball and bottle-belting in California. With Rube's help, Connie whipped the league...
...calmly turned down an offer of $1,000,000 for the club that had been bought 30 years ago for $2,500. "The offer wasn't even as high as the bid for Nashua [$1,251,200]," said Mara. ¶There was bad news in Brooklyn. Johnny Podres, southpaw pitching hero of the first World Series-winning Dodger team, was classified iA, is almost certain to get "greetings" from the Government before the season starts. His loss will leave Brooklyn with only two lefthanders: Karl Spooner and Sandy Koufax...
...Made Southpaw. Long before he knew what the word meant, Bill Russell was trained to be an athlete. But basketball was not part of the plan; in Monroe, La., where Bill was born, a Negro boy's prospects for first-class high-school training in basketball were close to zero. Bill's Uncle Bob decided that his nephew should grow up to be a baseball player. If Bill developed into a lefthanded pitcher, he might play good enough ball on Monroe's sand lots to earn a college scholarship. So Uncle Bob started early to convert...
Just as Uncle Bob planned, Bill grew up to be a southpaw. But baseball was forgotten when the family moved to Oakland, Calif. Like any other youngster. Bill tried to imitate his older brother, who was a flashy, high-school basketball player. On the court Bill was ambidextrous, but he was mostly Pogo-stick legs and gawky elbows, too awkward to make the regular team until his senior year...