Lefty's 14th

When the New York Yankees returned to New York last week for a series of baseball games with the Washington Senators, they were ten games ahead of the Detroit Tigers and it was generally considered that the Yankees had the American League pennant practically won. But they had just lost three straight games to the feeble Philadelphia Athletics, and the Senators had just stretched a winning streak to eight games. And there was also the problem of Yankee Pitcher Vernon ("Lefty") Gomez.

On July 19, bigfooted, popular Pitcher Gomez beat Cleveland for his 13th victory of the season. Superstitious, he believed that the 13th win might be a hard one to add to. A believer in astrology, he regarded the approach of Finsler's Comet with apprehension ("Comets and left-handed pitchers don't go well together"). His mother, of whom he was very fond, lay ill in Rodeo, Calif. Four times he had tried to win his 14th game and failed--twice against Chicago, once against Detroit, once against Philadelphia. He had sped by plane to California for a bedside visit, had sped back East to take his turn on the mound.

Big-league baseball has no such deep-rooted "the-show-must-go-on" tradition as exists in the theatre, for one reason because baseball's cast changes every day. So when Gomez started to walk out onto the field last week to warm up for the game he was scheduled to pitch against the Senators, the Yankees' bulky manager, Joe McCarthy, approached him with a sympathetic look on his face and a telegram in his pocket, told him that his mother was dead. "You don't have to pitch today, fella," said McCarthy. ''Your time's your own until you feel like working." After a silence Lefty Gomez replied: "I'll go out there, Joe. It would make me feel better."

To some 26,000 spectators it seemed .that Gomez was pitching like a rhythmic, flawless piece of machinery. In the last five and one-third innings he allowed only 18 Washington players to come to bat (minimum possible: 16). He also made two of the Yankees' nine hits. When the game was over (8-to-0) the Senators had made only three hits, scored no runs. This three-hit shutout was Pitcher Gomez' second best performance of the year.

Twenty-six thousand cheering spectators wondered why, after his long-sought 14th victory, the pitcher did not prance gaily off the field, tossing wisecracks. In the clubhouse Gomez sat with bowed head, struggling to keep back tears. Said he: "I don't recollect that I was in a game. I don't know what batters I faced. I don't know who made the hits. . . . My whole life at home rolled before me."

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