"It's Nice to Know"

Long-faced Manager "Red" Rolfe of the Detroit Tigers knew what was wrong with his ball club. "We lack speed,", he pointed out, "and we're not a long-ball-hitting club. We need five or six hits to make two or three runs." His best pitcher had a sore arm and had not been able to play in a regular game this season. Yet, at week's end, Robert Abial Rolfe's team was somehow leading the American League.

Detroit's good start was no great shock to the baseball pundits. Last year the Tigers finished fourth, ten games off the pace, but over the winter they strengthened themselves, on paper, by paying $125,000 and a pitcher to the St. Louis Browns for Second Baseman Gerry Priddy, and by trading lackadaisical Outfielder Wakefield* to the New York Yankees for promising First Baseman Dick Kryhoski.

With Third Baseman George Kell, a place-hitter who last year managed to shade Boston's Ted Williams by .0002 percentage points for the batting championship, and reliable Shortstop Johnny Lipon, Detroit hoped to have a major-league infield for the first time since it won the pennant in 1945. Red Rolfe's outfield promised to be even stronger, particularly if 1949 rookie sensation Johnny Groth could keep his .367 hitting pace. Detroit fans were already looking forward happily to a World Series in Briggs Stadium.

Manager Rolfe knew it might not be as simple as all that. Studious Red Rolfe keeps a typewritten card file on his players' performances, but it took no card file to tell him that First Baseman Kryhoski ("We'll need 15 or 20 homers out of him to win the pennant") was hitting a discouraging .196 last week. Moreover, he had not been able to use 28-year-old Pitcher Hal Newhouser at all, did not know when he could start him. "It's nice to know people are thinking of us in terms of a pennant," said Rolfe in a mild understatement. "We have a chance, but Boston and New York are loaded."

*Who made news of his own last week. When the Yankees sold him to the second-division Chicago White Sox, Wakefield refused to join the Sox unless they boosted his $17,000 pay by $5,500. Said the White Sox management: no deal. Since the Yankees did not want to take him back, that seemed to leave Wakefield, potentially a brilliant outfielder, the No. 1 D.P. of baseball. The problem presented to Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler (and still unresolved): did the New York Yankees, or the Chicago White Sox, owe Wakefield the current year's salary?

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