Word: wagnerism
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...look at the American selections quickly shows the changing character of the League. Gone are Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris, Minnie Minoso, Vic Power, Norm Cash and other big names of the past. Only two players catcher Earl Battey (.270) and left fielder Leon Wagner (.333) repeat from last year's team, although the incomparable Mickey Mantle (.310) won the vote despite his injury. Neophyte Pepitone (.273) is the only Yankee in the starting team, and Zoilo Versalles (.283), Minnesota's shortstop, is practically an unkown. Some old reliables, such as Nellie Fox (.277) at second, Al Kaline...
...this play Shakespeare stretched his reach as nowhere else. Indeed no other dramatist has ever taken on so huge and so impossible a task for the stage--not even Goethe with his Faust or Wagner with his Ring of the Nibelungen. Lear cannot achieve total success in performance; nor can Faust. But is this any reason to side with all those who continue to say they shouldn't be tried? With both works, enough is viable to warrant the attempt...
Baseball was obviously a less taxing and more lucrative occupation. Signed by the New York Giants in 1953, Wagner had no trouble solving minor-league pitching: over four seasons he averaged .324, and in 1956 he whacked 51 homers for Danville, Va. At last the Giants called him up. In gratitude, Wagner hit an enthusiastic .317-and dropped one out of every 18 flies. The horrified Giants traded him to the St. Louis Cardinals, who farmed him out again...
...Stars. "I haven't been recalled yet," Wagner says, but he did reform. "I spent hours shagging flies, practicing throws, working on low liners," he says. "I could get to the majors with my bat, but I knew I couldn't stay unless I got a glove." Picked up by the newborn Angels in 1961, Wagner finally got a chance to play regularly and made the most of it: .280 batting average, 28 homers, 79 RBIs. Last year he supplied the punch (37 homers, 107 RBIs) that kept the upstart Angels in first division. But his big moment...
...Wagner credits his early-season batting surge to a "secret weapon." His bat is a 33-oz. bludgeon with a thin, whippy handle and the biggest business end (8.6 inches around) that baseball rules will allow. Wagner wears a golf glove on his left hand,* grips the bat in unorthodox fashion-with his hands split two inches apart, à la Ty Cobb. "When my bat meets the ball," he says, "that old pill really takes off." Except in Chavez Ravine. For some mysterious reason, Slugger Wagner has yet to hit a homer in his own home park...