A Place in the Book

As the World Series began, baseball fans still talked about the long, last week of the season, when teams and players scrambled for a spot in the bible of baseball: the record book.

For Good Measure. In the American League, the front-running Indians never slowed down, kept throwing their best pitchers at second-division clubs, and set a league record of in victories in a single season. Behind them, the second-place Yankees, moving just off the pace, came within one game of the major-league record for also-rans by winning 103 games, four more than they needed last season to win the pennant.

In the National League, the third-place Milwaukee Braves finished far ahead of the pack in the profitable statistics of home-town attendance: a record total of more than 2,000,000. Just for fun, the Braves set another major-league record (minor variety): they replayed the last inning of a protested game with the Cincinnati Redlegs, played a full nine with the St. Louis Cards, and won both times.

Closest race for a line in baseball's record book was the tight fight for the National League batting title--and it went right down to the wire. Coming up to the plate on the last day of the season, the league-leading Giants' Willie Mays and Don Mueller and the Dodgers' Duke Snider were only a few hundredths of a percentage point apart.

Record of His Own. Willie the Wonder had long since stopped swinging for the fences. In the last weeks of the season he had been walloping hits through the infield with increasing regularity, hitting the ball wherever it was pitched. Puzzled pitchers could scarcely sneak a bad ball past him; he was turning into the best bad-ball batter since the great Ducky Medwick. His average climbed steadily.

Taciturn Don Mueller, always a power at the plate, inched up steadily on Mays and Snider all summer, pushed his total of base hits past the 200 mark--the first Giant to turn the trick since Jo-Jo Moore in 1936. A quiet, conscientious competitor, Mueller got so heated up by his team's pennant fight that he managed to set a record of sorts of his own: last month, for the first time in eleven years of organized baseball, he yammered at an umpire loudly enough to get himself tossed out of a game.

Lefthanded Hitter Duke Snider, whose batting has fattened for years while the opposition pitched righthanders against his righthanded teammates, tried every trick in the book to boost his average. In the last game against the Giants he was faced with an unexpected surprise: the Giants' sparkling southpaw Ace Johnny Antonelli. The Duke promptly came up with a sore shoulder and sat out the game. In the next game he was right back at his hard-hitting ways.

In the end, it was Willie's year. In the last game he came through with three hits in four times at bat, pushed his average to an impressive .345. In second place: Don Mueller with .342.

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