Under New Management

"Just let me worry about the club," Joe McCarthy liked to say. He worried about it to such good effect that in 15 years the Yankees won eight American League pennants and seven world championships. But sometimes the owners had to worry about Joe. He was a chubby, jut-jawed fellow, quiet, a little distant, sometimes grumpy, the kind of manager who usually waited until next day, and the privacy of his office, to complain about a bonehead play.

Once or twice a season of late, depending on how he took care of himself, Joe McCarthy had something else to worry about: his gall bladder. It was acting up last week, and the Yankees' 59-year-old manager went home to Buffalo to mind it.

At first, it looked like another self-imposed exile. Last summer, moody Joe McCarthy had gone over the hill in the heat of the pennant race, talked vaguely about resigning, and came back three weeks later. This time, he resigned and meant it. Said he: "I've been in this business for 40 years . . . that's a long time."

Yankee President Larry MacPhail promptly picked McCarthy's successor: William Malcolm ("Bill") Dickey, 38, perhaps the best catcher ever to put on a big-league mitt. He was first-string backstop when McCarthy took over the Yankees in 1931, and was still behind the plate last week. Bill Dickey was a big fellow (6 ft. 3 in.) who seldom had much to say, but a nice way of saying it. His only previous experience as a manager was in the Navy: his club won six straight against the Army in 1945's Service World Series.

Just six hours before Dickey took over the Yanks, Chicago had a managerial upheaval too. It was twelve years ago that gabby James J. Dykes blew a smoke ring, calmly stabbed it with a pudgy forefinger and became manager of the Chicago White Sox. Since then he has averaged 15 cigars a day, and six seasons in the second division, and got stomach trouble worrying along his mediocre players. After the White Sox lost their 10th game in 13 last week, Jimmy Dykes quit under pressure. His successor: 45-year-old Ted Lyons, the Sox's veteran Sunday pitcher (TIME, April 22).

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