Streetcar Series

Whatever happened in the World Series would be an anticlimax. For the first time since 1908 the American League pennant race had gone smack down to the wire; on the last day of the season, after 153 games, the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Browns were even Stephen, with 88 wins and 65 losses apiece.

Threatened with rain, the Tigers started their game against the last-place Washington Senators an hour early. The opposing pitcher, 34-year-old Knuckleballer Dutch Leonard hadn't beaten the Tigers in three years. By the time the Browns went to work against the third-place New York Yankees--before an alltime record home crowd of 37,815--the Scoreboard showed Detroit trailing by three runs. By the time Chet Laabs had pumped the first Brownie homer of the day (he hit another the next inning) into Sportsman's Park's left-field bleachers, Detroit had lost, 4-to-1. A better team than the Browns might have wilted right then & there, but Luke Sewell & Co. were not even breathing hard; they breezed to a 5-to-2 victory and the Browns' first pennant in American League history.

The final four-game series with the Yankees was a perfect example of how the amazing Browns had done it. They turned 22 hits into twelve runs for four straight wins, while the New Yorkers produced only three runs on 25 hits. Sewell's boys might be seventh in league batting, but they were in a class by themselves when it came to clutch hitting.

With Nelson Potter (19-to-7) heading a rejuvenated pitching staff, the Browns had won eleven of their last twelve games. They might well prove to be tougher than the Tigers as World Series opponents of the perennial champion St. Louis Cardinals. For offsetting Detroit's Hal New-houser and his fabulous 20-to-9 pitching record was the decline of Dizzy Trout (27-14), who had lost twice in the crucial last week and seemed to be overworked. Even the Tiger slugging combination of Rudy York and Dick Wakefield might have been less effective than Luke Sewell's magically managed horseshoes. The Cards, despite their 2-to-1 bulge in the betting odds, were none too confident about their first streetcar World Series.

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