At the Waldorf

For two days last week baseball's major-league club owners sat in secret session in Manhattan's swank Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, solemnly plotting the 1939 course of the U. S. national game. Meanwhile baseball's henchmen--managers, scouts, oldtimers, sportswriters, votaries--set up their "hot stove" in the Waldorf's elegant lobby, toasted the crumbs that fell from the sovereigns' table.

American League bigwigs, following in the four-year-old tracks of the National League, granted the Cleveland and Philadelphia clubs permission to play seven home games apiece under lights next year.* Both leagues compromised on a uniform ball for 1939: an American League (thinner) covering with National League (five strands instead of four) stitching--the one extra strand supposedly giving the pitcher a better grip on the ball.

Of most interest to the hot-stovers were the trades the managers cooked up. Most active trader was the New York Giants' Bill Terry. After making an even-Stephen swap with the Chicago Cubs (Bartell, Leiber, Mancuso for Demaree, Jurges, O'Dea) at the minor-league meeting the week before, the Giants paid the Washington Senators $20,000 (plus two players) for hard-hitting Zeke Bonura. then picked up a few more players in the lobby of the Waldorf. Most outstanding trade of the week was the Detroit Tigers' acquisition of Pitcher Freddy Hutchinson, 19, of the Seattle Rainiers (Pacific Coast League) for a reputed $50,000 and four players.

"Big Hutch," a 200-lb., 6 ft. 2 in. righthander, the sensation of the West Coast last summer, had major-league scouts tripping over one another in the Rainiers' ball park. When he finished the season with 25 games won, seven lost, 145 strikeouts, an earned-run average of 2.48 and a batting average of .313, Owner Emil Sick of the Seattle club put a $100,000 price tag on this rookie pitcher, fresh from high school. Although no club owner was willing to pay that amount in cash, the Tigers --outbidding the rich Yankees, Red Sox, Pirates and Cubs last week--gave almost the equivalent of $100,000 for the baseball find of the year.

* This year the National League Brooklyn Dodgers drew 178,000 fans to seven night games, admitted that the same seven games, played in the afternoon, would have drawn 35,000.

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