Westward Ho!

Why hasn't the West Coast got major-league baseball? It has the fans and the players to justify it. Those are the vociferous sentiments of Clarence Henry Rowland. Last week West Coast baseball took a long step nearer major-league status. For "Pants" Rowland, ex-barkeep, umpire, manager and scout, was elected president of the Pacific Coast League (eight teams, Seattle to Los Angeles).

Tradition-loving Organized Baseball, whose major-league pattern has not been altered in 28 years, frowns at such loud Lochinvars out of the West. But baseball's shrewdest minds see two real possibilities, and call Rowland the man to actualize them.

One possibility is the formation of a third major league on the West Coast, even if Baseball Tyrant K. M. Landis threatens outlawry. The other: extension of the present American and National Leagues to include San Francisco and Los Angeles--and probably Houston and Kansas City as well, to keep air-travel costs within reason.

Either move must probably wait until war's end. But baseball pundits noted that Hollywood cash will be quickly available if Pants Rowland decides to move fast.

The West Coast's major-league champion got his nickname from base-running antics while wearing his father's overalls as a nine-year-old member of the Dubuque (Iowa) Ninth Street Blues. Now 64, he dresses like a tailor's ad, drinks champagne cocktails and has been called "the most lovable guy in the whole damn game." As president of Los Angeles' Angels, Pants earned The Sporting News's (TIME, Nov. 8) title of No. 1 minor-league executive last year.

Pants is also called a man of surprises: no big-league player himself, he managed the White Sox to Chicago's last world championship, in 1917. As a Cub scout 21 years later, he obeyed Owner P. K. Wrigley's orders to buy lame-armed Dizzy Dean at any price, finally landed him for the most improvidently invested $185,000 in baseball history.

Pants will have plenty of time to justify his reputation for surprises. His $12,500-a-year term as Pacific Coast League president runs until 1954.

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