Me & Von

Until warmup time, St. Louis Cardinal Manager Freddy Hutchinson had not dared to tell his 18-year-old kid pitcher that he was going to start against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Gangling (6 ft. 2 in., 180 Ibs.) Max Von McDaniel, duly warmed up, had little cause to get nervous until the sixth inning, when the bases suddenly got full of scampering Dodgers and none were out. But the youngster forced Old Pro Elmer Valo, 36, to bounce back to the box, calmly threw home to start a run-nipping double play, and then got Outfielder Gino Cimoli to ground out on an inside fast ball to end the inning. When he finished his two-hit victory last week (final score: 2-0), the Oklahoma kid was the talk of the National League and the upstart St. Louis Cardinals were in first place in the wildest early-season pennant scramble in years.

Not until young Von was through whistling his fast one past the Dodgers did another Cardinal pitcher stop squirming on the bench. "Boy,'' gasped Von's big brother, Lyndall McDaniel, 21, "I never sweat like that when I'm pitching. Those were two long hours, kid."

Together, Von and Lindy McDaniel are the surprise stars of the surprising Cardinals, who won three out of every four games during their one-month drive from fifth place to the top of the league. Von and Lindy are the only pair of brothers pitching for any major-league team, and the first pair of pitching brothers to wear Cardinal uniforms since the Dean boys--Dizzy and Paul--brought home a pennant in the glory days of 1934.*

The McDaniel boys--both righthanders, both Bible students--grew up throwing their bullets in Hollis (pop. 3,089), Okla. Lindy got $50,000 to sign in 1955, when he was just 19, had only a mediocre year in 1956 (7-6). When Von struck out 243 batters this spring in his senior year in high school, big-league scouts swarmed around the McDaniel cotton farm once again. But father Newell McDaniel had his mind made up. "Just like Lindy, the price is $50,000," he said. "There's no bidding. I want the two boys to play together." Hastily, Cardinal President Gussie (Budweiser) Busch dug up another $50,000 for another McDaniel.

This year big brother Lindy matured into one of the best pitchers in the league, by last week had a 7-3 record. Better yet, young Von was fooling major-league batters as efficiently as he fooled the high-school kids back home, was unscored on after 17 innings of pitching, had a 2-0 record. Paced by the tremendous hitting of Old Standby Stan Musial. who leads the league in batting (.365) and runs batted in (53), is second in home runs (15), the Cardinals for the first time in eleven years seemed bent on flying all the way to their first pennant--with an assist from Lindy and Von. Said Veteran Musial: "It just seems as if they knew how to pitch when they were born."

*That year "Me and Paul" won respectively 30 and 19 games, pitched the Cards to the pennant and world championship.

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