The Kids

The youngest ball club in World Series history was the one that finally crushed the invincible Yankees. Towering above their opponents for seven years, the New York Yankees had made a farce of big-league competition. Last week they were cut down to size by a bunch of kids so young and inexperienced they were confidently expected to blow apart at the seams under World Series tension.

But not the St. Louis Cardinals of 1942. In their book, nothing is too difficult. Their outfielders make octopus catches, pick off base runners with the cool precision of anti-aircraft guns. Their runners can beat out any bunt, are shamefaced if they can't make third from first on an outfield single. Last week these scooping, swooping musketmen upset Yankee morale. In the first game of the Series, with Old Reliable Red Ruffing only four putouts away from a no-hitter, they staged a rally that scored four runs, sent Ruff to the showers and nearly stole the ball game.

Ernie and The Tide. If there was one outstanding hero of last week's Series, it was Southpaw Ernie White. With the help of two miraculous one-handed catches by Outfielders Enos Slaughter and Terry Moore, White whitewashed the Yankees, 2-to-0--something that had not happened to them in a World Series in 16 years.

The last time the Yankees were thus humiliated in a Series game was in the Ruthian era (in 1926) when Jesse Haines, another Cardinal, in the third game of the Series, stilled the Yank bats, turned the tide, and the Cardinals went on to win the championship. Last week Ernie White turned the tide as Haines had done. The game he won was the third of the Series. It put the Cards one crucial game ahead.

The Beaze and His Grip. Another hero was long-legged Johnny Beazley, 23, only Cardinal pitcher to win two games in this year's Series. He grips the ball so hard his hand quivers for a half hour after each game. But the Beaze has plenty on the ball. This year, his first in the big leagues, he won 21 games--best rookie record since Ol' Pete Alexander chalked up 28 in 1911.

When Manager Billy Southworth chose the Beaze for the second game of the series, even his staunchest admirers feared he would blow up with World Series jitters. The kid was walloped for ten hits, got into one jam after another, but at the last out he was still on the mound, the first rookie to win a Series game since Paul Dean trimmed the Detroit Tigers for St. Louis in 1934.

In winning the fifth and final game, Beazley turned in another masterful performance. In the fifth inning, trailing by one run, with the bases loaded and two Cardinal errors behind him, he calmly retired Cullenbine and DiMaggio. He kept his head until Whitey Kurowski broke up a nerve-racking ninth-inning tie with a home run to bring in an extra run and give the Cardinals the game (4-to-2) and the championship, four games to one. .

The Country's Rabbits. But neither White nor Beazley could have been a hero without Enos Slaughter, mightiest of the Missouri robber barons. Though his teammates call him "Country"--because he came to the Cardinal tryout camp straight from the North Carolina backwoods--there is nothing slow about Slaughter. He is the second-best batter (.318) in the National League, is almost a Ty Cobb on the bases, has a magnetic mitt and a mighty arm (developed, he says, pegging stones at rabbits when he was a shaver).

In the second game, with the score tied 3-to-3 and two out in the eighth, Slaughter slammed a line drive into right field, beat the throw-in to second base, streaked to third as Shortstop Rizzuto bobbled the ball. On Musial's single, he scored what turned out to be the winning run. Then, in the ninth, his bull's-eye throw from right field to third base saved the game for the Cardinals.

But the stove-league gossip this winter will center around the whole team, rather than the trio of heroes--with an added point for debate: Was this the last World Series for the duration? If it was, the 1942 Cards may be world champions until 1945--or later.

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