Pitchers of the Year

A month ago Pitcher Carl Hubbell, lean left-hander of the New York Giants, pitched an 18-inning game against the St. Louis Cardinals which the Giants won. 1 to 0. That was enough to make 1933 a memorable season for Pitcher Hubbell but he was not satisfied. Last week, in the fourth inning of a game between Boston and the Giants, he had a chance to break the National League record of 44 consecutive scoreless innings, made by Pitcher Ed Reulbach of the Chicago Cubs in 1908. The first batter hit a fly. Next man up was Wally Berger, one of the National League's two leading homerun hitters. Hubbell struck him out. Randy Moore, the next batter, singled, but when the Giants' Shortstop Ryan caught a line drive from the next batter Hubbell's record was safe. To make it safer, he pitched 1 2/3 more scoreless innings and the crowd had begun to think seriously about Walter Johnson's world record of 56 scoreless innings in a row, when, with two out in the sixth, Boston's Rightfielder Moore on his third strike hit a single that brought in two runs, helped the Braves win, 3 to 1. Pitcher Hubbell's 18-inning shut-out against the Cardinals was not included in his record of 46. It began two weeks later in St. Louis when he pitched the last three innings of a game that caused St. Louis' famed Third Baseman Pepper Martin to remark: "They shouldn't bother to put the home plate down when that guy is working." Stringy, taciturn, a contradiction of the baseball superstition that left-handed pitchers are mentally erratic, it took Pitcher Hubbell a long time to start working at all. Detroit scouts discovered him pitching for a minor league team in Oklahoma in 1924. By 1927 he had advanced so little that Detroit farmed him out with five minor league teams be fore they decided that he was not worth keeping. Two years later, a Giant scout saw him pitching in Beaumont, Tex. and persuaded Manager John McGraw to hire him. In May 1929, in his ninth complete major league game, Carl Hubbell pitched a no-hit game against Pittsburgh. Lazy and solemn in action, particularly fond of a "screw-ball" which breaks sharply down and away from batters, Pitcher Hubbell thinks he has improved since then. Says he: "I have learned a lot ... and I feel stronger. It takes quite a while to learn how to pitch big-league baseball."

Whether or not, as experts suspect, the National League official ball was secretly made slower this year, the season of 1933 has so far been a pitcher's year. Last fortnight Pitcher Jerome Herman Dean of the St. Louis Cardinals, who insists on being called by his nickname "Dizzy," broke a 25-year-old record by striking out 17 batters in one game. The Giants under Manager Bill Terry, who has organized the best pitching staff in the league, have unexpectedly stayed in first place against harder-hitting teams like Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Chicago. Last week the Giants made it clear that they do not depend entirely on defensive skill by thrashing Philadelphia 18 to 1 twice in a row.

No one has suggested that the American League ball has been changed this year; there have been only 36 shut-out games to 72 in the National League. Nonetheless, pitching has become more important than it used to be. The hard-hitting Yankees, unanimously picked by experts to win another pennant, were last week in second place, behind the Washington Senators. After scoring at least one run in each of 308 consecutive games--exactly two full seasons and a record never before approached in organized baseball--the Yankees were shut out by Pitcher Robert Moses ("Lefty") Grove of the Philadelphia Athletics, 7 to 0. To do it he had to strike out Babe Ruth with the bases full in the eighth inning. "General" Alvin Crowder who up to last week had won 16 and lost seven games for the Washington Senators, learned to play ball when he was a buck private in the Army. He had been shipped from Siberia to the Philippines and back again before a Pacific Coast League scout offered him a job. Cool, deliberate, with a manner of being deeply bored by all baseball, Pitcher Crowder chuckles sadly when he has successfully employed his favorite ruse--a slow ball, when batters normally expect a fast ball or a curve--for a particularly humiliating third strike. Oral Hildebrand, lanky right-handed No. 1 member of the Cleveland Indians' staff, last week lived up to his first name too well. He was fined $100 by Manager Walter Johnson for insubordination. When General Manager Billy Evans refused to rescind the fine, temperamental Pitcher Hildebrand apologized to Manager Johnson, pitched six innings of a losing game against Detroit. His record for the season: won 12, lost 7. Twenty-four-year-old Lon Warneke of the Chicago Cubs won 22 games last season, his first as a starting pitcher with a major league team. His most noticeable asset is that indefatigability which, in pitchers, is called a "rubber arm." Baseball experts--who consider the screwball baseball's most taxing delivery--expect his proficiency to last longer than Pitcher Hubbell's. Lon Warneke's description of effective pitching: "Sixty per cent luck . . . 30% control . . . 10% a low curve ball. . . ."

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