No-Hitter

Branch Rickey was unhappy about the way his third-place Dodgers were playing baseball. In an after-dinner speech last week he remarked that some of his players were getting "a little complacent."

"The hell I'm complacent!" was Second Baseman Jackie Robinson's reaction next day.

Rickey backpedaled a bit. "Perhaps only one or two men are guilty," he said. That night the aroused Dodgers went out and beat the Boston Braves, to end a four-game losing streak. The next night, even Rickey's needling didn't help. There was nothing complacent about the way the Dodgers were swinging at Vernon Bickford's pitches, but for the life of them they could not get a hit.

By the seventh inning the crowd began edging up on their seats; no hits yet, and Bickford was still clipping the corners of the plate with tantalizing sliders and sinkers and a fast-breaking curve. Bickford had walked Dodgers in the fourth and fifth innings, but otherwise his control had been perfect.

In the ninth inning the strain began to tell. Bickford walked two Dodgers. "I was really nervous," he admitted later. Then, with two men on base and one out, Dodger Outfielder Duke Snider banged into a double play, ending the game and giving Bickford his no-hitter.* Final score: Boston 7, Brooklyn 0.

* First in the major leagues since Sept. 9, 1948, when the Dodgers' Rex Barney shut out the Giants at the Polo Grounds.

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