Mexican Hayride

Jorge Pasquel, the Mr. Big of Mexican baseball, was feeling pretty bullish last week. "Sure you can say I'm a dictator," he chortled. "Whatever I order is done."

Jorge is No. 1 among three brothers who operate and manipulate the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol (Mexican Baseball League). With the aid of $20,000,000 picked up in a variety of businesses, he has just spirited some 15 U.S. big-league ballplayers off on a Mexican hayride.

A Mexican league of sorts has limped along, largely on unofficial betting, for 21 years. A once great U.S. star, Rogers Hornsby, took a fling at it in 1944. quit after he had broken up a game with a grand-slam homer. (The club owner told him he shouldn't have done that, because it would hurt the next day's attendance.) By such showmanship the brothers Pasquel hope to take Mexico's mind off bullfighting. They talk big of plans to lure 30 or 40 U.S. big-leaguers south next year, to increase their three-games-a-week schedule to what they regard as a back-breaking four. The brothers own all eight clubs, in whole or in part.

Most of the major-leaguers who fell for the bait of outsize, tax-free Mexican salaries were Latins who did not look too bad under the pitiful lights of wartime U.S. ball, but would spend a lot of their time on the bench in 1946. Best known: the Giants' Napoleon Reyes and Danny Gardella, the Athletics' Roberto Estalella, the White Sox' Alejandro Carrasquel, the Dodgers' Luis Olmo.

Giant Manager Mel Ott was not exactly sleepless over the loss of third baseman Reyes and show-offy Danny Gardella, a fair slugger who has a knack of making fly balls look hard to catch (he often ends by not catching them).

But the Dodgers' Branch Rickey, who spends slowly and talks fast, will miss Olmo, who batted .313 last year. Jorge Pasquel "liberated" Olmo from Rickey for $40,000 for three years.

When the raiding started, organized baseball in the U.S. declared diplomatic warfare on the Liga. The U.S. officially recognized a small-time competitor, the Mexican National League, pointedly ignored the Pasquel circuit, which thus remained "outlaw." Smart Dictator Pasquel affects to be very amused by this. Says he: "Yankee humor."

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