Relaxed Redbird

Harry ("the Hat") Walker had a problem. His Rochester Red Wings, International League pennant winners in 1953, were in third place. He needed pitchers, and as a farmclub manager for the St. Louis Cardinals, he had only one place to look. "Is Stanky going to keep eleven pitchers up there all season?" Harry asked Dick Meyer, the Cards' general manager.

Meyer had a quick comeback: "I can't answer that question, Harry. On Saturday night the matter will be in your hands--you'll be managing the Cardinals."*

All or Nothing. So last week the ill-kept secret was finally official. After 3 1/2 unhappy seasons, Eddie Stanky, one of the most cantankerous citizens ever to snarl across a big-league ball diamond, had got his walking papers. As a replacement for mild-mannered Marty Marion (now managing the lively Chicago White Sox), Eddie had two strikes on him before he took off his Giant uniform and started managing the Redbirds. St. Louis, though it had learned to love the antics of its old Gashouse Gang, never could cotton to Eddie's truculent, all-or-nothing attitude.

Long before they watched him chew out an umpire or heard about his post-game temper tantrums, St. Louis fans knew Eddie as "the Brat." Only a winning team could have atoned for Stanky's highhanded, hotheaded tactics--and the hardhitting Cardinals lost. For two straight years they finished third; last year they wound up sixth. This season, everything went wrong--the heavy hitters connected when it counted least, the few good pitchers faltered (except for Lefty Luis Arroyo, who won six straight), and the Cards were 10 1/2 games behind the league-leading Dodgers. Beer Baron August A. Busch Jr., the Cards' owner, decided that Stanky was too much foam and not enough body. It was time for a change.

A change it will be. Mississippi-born Harry Walker, 36, belongs to that new fraternity of successful managers, the nice guys. As soft-spoken as Walter Alston, as even-tempered as Al Lopez, as persistently pleasant as Jolly Cholly Grimm, he combines those traits with a driving urge to win. He came up to the Cards in 1941; by 1943 he was in the Army, where an attack of spinal meningitis left him so stiff that doctors told him his career as a ballplayer was over. Outfielder Harry stubbornly taught himself to make shoestring catches by sliding the last few feet on his rump. Skidding his 6 ft. 2 in. frame across the outfield grass, he never failed to delight the customers. At the plate, in 1947, he led the league in hitting (average .363). He hung on as an active major-leaguer until 1950, drifting to Philadelphia, Chicago and Cincinnati before he began his apprenticeship as a minor-league manager.

New Prescription. Unlike Stanky, Harry comes back to St. Louis riding high on remembered glory. His hitting helped the Cardinals to their last world championship--nine long years ago. His time-consuming habit of fiddling with his cap between pitches seemed good-natured fun, and it earned him his nickname.

No one knows better than Harry Walker, though, how much Stanky has accomplished in rebuilding the Redbirds. Says he: "Baseball is played basically the same by all clubs. The players are the important thing." The Cards today have the players, all right--the lively oldtimers Musial and Schoendienst, some heavy-hitting youngsters, Moon, Repulski and Virdon, and a few reliable pitchers, Arroyo, Harvey Haddix (an 18-game winner last year) and fireballing Brooks Lawrence. To bring them along as fast as he can, Harry Walker uses one un-Stanky prescription: relaxation. "I feel that you should let the players be natural and avoid tension. A team does its best when it feels at ease."

* Replacing Walker in Rochester: his brother Dixie, the "People's Cherce" in his playing days with Brooklyn, who has been a Cardinal coach since December.

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