Boon for Batters

"Whenever there are runners on the bases and a righthanded batter steps up," wrote Red Smith in his syndicated sports column, "a sense of impending doom settles upon the multitude. Fear grips the pitcher. Panic stalks the stands. Maybe the batter will pop the ball harmlessly into the stratosmog, but the threat of a shattering home run is always imminent."

As the Los Angeles Dodgers stumbled through their first home stand last week, Smith's amiable hyperbole was borne out by the remorseless arithmetic of the score card. The looming left-field screen that was supposed to turn Memorial Coliseum into a big-league ballpark (TIME, April 28) had become the biggest boon to batters since the rabbit ball. At the end of eight home games, 26 homers had got lost on the far side of the screen only 250 ft. away.

Visitors sighted in with far more ease than their hapless hosts. When the Giants' Danny O'Connell collected a pair of homers in a single game, the Milwaukee Journal, which knew him as a hitless wonder when he played for the Braves, was moved to protest: "Any time O'Connell hits two home runs in one game, something's wrong. In his three and a half years here, with normal foul lines of 320 ft., he hit exactly NONE." Then the Chicago Cubs came to town. They demolished the Dodgers, 15-2, and hit four homers to the Dodgers' two. Three of the Cub homers were hit over the friendly fence by Rightfielder Lee Walls, who took all last season to hit six.

One man who really felt left out was the Dodgers' top slugger, Duke Snider. A fine lefthanded hitter, he slashes fat pitches to right field. And there the Coliseum outfield seems to stretch away forever like a vast green cow pasture. In his frustration, Duke undertook to prove to Infielder Don Zimmer that at least he could heave a ball out of the park. In a pregame contest, he threw a ball up to the 76th row of the 79-row stands before something snapped in his elbow. The team doctor prescribed rest and heat; Manager Walter Alston angrily ordered another kind of medicine. Every game Duke missed because of his horseplay, said Alston, would cost him a day's pay ($275). Next night the Duke was back in uniform, sore arm and all.

At week's end, the Dodgers were far back in sixth place. But so many fans turned out to watch the homers soar over the left-field screen that when they beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 5-3, the Dodgers drew the largest crowd ever to watch a National League night game (60,635). With all those paying guests, the Dodgers could well afford the modest cost ($2 apiece) of all those lost balls.

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