Gentlemen, the Dodgers

When it comes to hitting a baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers are as gentle a bunch of fellows as ever donned knickers. They have just three .300 hitters on the roster--an odd lot made up of a grizzled player-coach (Jim Gilliam), a substitute outfielder (Lou Johnson) and a pitcher (Don Drysdale). As a team, the Dodgers have the fourth lowest batting average (.247) in the National League, have hit fewer home runs (37) than anybody in either league. Worse yet, they have, in three months, suffered 29 "disabling" injuries --meaning that each was bad enough to put the injured party on the bench or in a hospital. Centerfielder Willie Davis, who batted .294 and stole 42 bases last year, has a rib separation; Leftfielder Tommy Davis, the National League's batting champion in 1962 and 1963, has already missed eight weeks with a broken ankle.

And yet, as the season approaches midpoint, there are the Dodgers leading the league by 2 1/2 games.

So what have the Dodgers got? For one thing they have, as New York Mets Pitcher Warren Spahn says, "the best pitching staff in baseball." Lefthander Sandy Koufax has painful arthritis in his throwing elbow, still leads the league with twelve wins (v. three losses) and 159 strikeouts. Righthander Drysdale, when he isn't thinking about base hits, pitches well enough to post another eleven victories. Lefthander Claude Osteen, picked up over the winter from the American League's Washington Senators, has accounted for six, and "should have won three more victories than he shows," according to Manager Alston. The combined earned-run average of all three: a measly 2.28.

There are other things, too, in the Dodgers' grand design--little things like a single, a stolen base, a sacrifice at just the right time. Shortstop Maury Wills at 32 is still the best base runner in the business: by last week, he had stolen 44 bases in 71 games--14 games ahead of his pace three years ago, when he broke Ty Cobb's 47-year-old big-league record by stealing 104 bases. Sighs Mets Manager Casey Stengel: "Those Dodgers are a running club. They hit and run. They run and hit. They bunt. They steal. They take chances." And they win.

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