October's Hero

At another time, in another place, the jittery man in the grey flannel, red-trimmed suit might have been carted off to the booby hatch. He jerked, jiggled, tugged at his cap. He scratched and spat. In front of 61,207 at Yankee Stadium, and 40 million more on TV, he shuddered through two hours of spasms. But no one who watched the Yankees and the Braves in the last game of the World Series last week worried about the sanity of Selva Lewis Burdette Jr., 30. Throwing a sneaky assortment of curves, sinkers and screwballs, he made last year's world champions look like bushers while he -- and the Braves beat them in the big one, 5-0, and took the World Series four games to three.

More than usual, the Series revolved around the achievement of one man. While the Yanks poked at his low, sharp-breaking pitches like tired biddies beating carpets, Burdette licked the Yanks three times, to become the first pitcher to start and win three games in a single Series since the Cleveland Indians' Spitballer Stan Coveleskie spattered the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1920. Burdette's coup also made him the first pitcher in 52 years to score two shutouts in a single Series, first ever to shut out the Yankees in two Series games. It was all the more impressive because the Braves gave Burdette remarkably little help at bat. Although Centerfielder Hank Aaron hit three home runs and a total of eleven hits (one less than the Series record), the new champions together set a record as the lowest-hitting team ever to win a seven-game Series (average: .209).

Beanballs & Bats. The Yankees found it a sad and ironic way to learn something new about the slim (6 ft. 2 in., 180 Ibs.) man with the ice-blue eyes who had come up through their farm system only to fail as a Yankee starter in 1950. The next year they had been only too happy to toss Burdette into a $50,000 deal to get Pitcher Johnny Sain from the Braves as pennant insurance.

As a youngster in Nitro, W. Va. (whose 5,000 residents call it "Powdertown" from its origin as a World War I gunpowder producer), Burdette was a late starter in baseball. The local high school had no team, so Lew--or "Froggy" as the kids nicknamed him after his voice began to change--filled in his days holding a cue at the Idle Hour Pool Room or heaving rocks through windows. "One night," recalled an old chum in Nitro last week, "a gang of us were knocking out windows in the Nazarene Church. Lew was half a block behind us, standing in a creek, and hitting them as regularly as any of us. The police-nabbed us boys up close to the church, put us in jail for a scare, but they never had any idea Lew was around. He escaped just because he could throw farther than the rest of us." Lew traded rocks for a baseball in order to get a job at the local American Viscose plant, whose factory team needed a pitcher. He improved fast enough to earn a baseball scholarship to the University of Richmond, and there a Yankee scout found him.

But Lew never really found himself until he was sent to the Braves. Pennant-hungry Milwaukee brought out the mean-spirited competitor in him, and he delighted in the sight of an opposing batter sprawling to escape his head-high fast ball. The measure of his success is the list of angry complaints that have scampered across four years of sports pages. Some of his National League opponents insisted--and still do--that he uses the outlawed spitball. "He breaks every rule in the book,'' maintains Cincinnati Manager Birdie Tebbetts. "The umpires tell me it doesn't matter as long as he goes to the rosin bag before making a pitch. The rosin bag has become his father confessor. It absolves him of all sin." As a bench jockey, Burdette has been challenged to fisticuffs by Jackie Robinson, once even goaded even-tempered Roy Campanella into chasing him with a bat. Off the field the Braves got to know

Lew as a happy clown, a sometimes sophomoric cutup who delights in sticking his head out of the team bus and tying up traffic on the way to a game with his piercing imitation of a police whistle. His pretty wife Mary, a onetime Charleston, W. Va. telephone operator, cannot understand why everyone does not love him. Home from an afternoon of fidgeting in the ballpark, Lew is a fond father who likes to stretch out in the living room and turn the hi-fi to blasting-level for Dixieland or "grand ole opry" records. He amuses his children--Lewis Kent, 6, Madge Rhea, 2, and Mary Lou, three weeks--with his West Virginia version of yodeling.

In the off season, Lew settles his family in Sarasota, Fla.. where he owns a $20,000 home, fattens up on his favorite meals (ham and eggs for breakfast, fried chicken for dinner), fly-casts for trout on a lake he has stocked himself, and prepares for the days his curve stops breaking by building up a thriving real estate business. Crowed a business associate last week: "He's a wonderful guy. Three victories are going to have a big bearing on added sales."

Hero's Return. When the Braves flew home to Milwaukee immediately after the last game. Burdette was still sputtering with tension --his eyebrows flapped, his forehead furled and flattened, his shoulders seemed to shrug of their own accord, his cigarette ashes fell all over his bright yellow and black necktie. "Hey, Lew, how you feel?" a boy called.

"With my fingers," Lew answered. "They got you running for President," another admirer hollered. "I don't think I'd make a good one," said Lew.

While the team's motorcade crawled across the bedlam of a citywide celebration. Lew turned up the convertible's radio and listened to a newscaster's description of the excitement. A careless woman cut her foot on a broken beer bottle. A man smashed his camera on the sidewalk when a flashbulb failed to fire. Eight nuns standing back from the curbside crowd waved their shy congratulations. Before the night ended, half a million Wisconsinites had cheered the champions, and 35 elbow-benders were in the drunk tank.

In all the uproar there was hardly time for Lew to greet his wife or muse on the happy fact that within the next few weeks he will be able to turn his sudden fame into more than $20,000 worth of endorsements and personal appearances. Less than a month ago, said Lew's newly acquired manager Frank Scott, the price of Lew's presence at some public function, say a keg-tapping at a new brewery, would have come to "a couple of hundred bucks--maybe." Now he rates $2,000 an appearance.

It was enough to make even a practical joker like Selva Lewis Burdette Jr. take life seriously for a moment. "Funny what can happen in a week's time," he said.

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