Tame Indian

While major league muscle boys were poling home runs at near-record rates, a lean, goodlooking outfielder who has only two to his credit this season was demonstrating a different sort of batting prowess. Cleveland Indian Centerfielder Jimmy Piersall, 31. was spraying line drives to all fields, collecting so many base hits that, at week's end, he sported a batting average a flashy 90 points over his lifetime .272 mark. The young father of eight led both leagues in hits and was a big reason for his team's surge into a three-way American League battle for first place. For a superb fielder who was always kidded as a patsy at the plate (New York Yankee Slugger Mickey Mantle used to taunt him, "Don't forget your glove"), it was quite a performance.

The Big Difference. A taut, nervous player who has been in and out of trouble ever since he got to the majors in 1952, the same year he spent two months in a mental institution, Piersall is still getting into scrapes. He capers on the field, spats with Cleveland sportswriters, makes faces and occasionally spits when the fans ride him. But he has been a model of gentlemanly deportment compared to last year, when he was thumbed from seven games, had the league in an uproar over such antics as heaving an orange and a baseball (both missed) at Bill Veeck's absurd $300,000 Comiskey Park Scoreboard, which fires rockets and blows horns when White Sox players hit home runs.

The big difference between the tantrum-tossing Piersall of 1960 and today's tame Indian is crotchety, dry-witted Manager Jimmie Dykes, 64, who came to the Indians last year in a mid-season managerial swap that sent Joe Gordon to Detroit. Says Indian General Manager Gabe Paul: "You can't ever expect Pier-sail to be a Little Lord Fauntleroy. He has his moments. But with Dykes around, he's under control at all times."

Dykes adopted a patient, paternal attitude toward Piersall, although he refused to pamper him. "If he starts to say anything out there, to the umps, for instance, I go out and yell, 'Jimmy' shut up.' It works like magic." Says Piersall: "The biggest thing is playing for someone who wants me and that makes all the difference in the world. I'm not playing for a guy who makes me the fall guy."

Talking Bat. So well has Dykes' magic worked that Piersall has yet to be bounced from a game this year. And Piersall has brought more to the Indians than a somewhat mellowed manner. Concentrating on his hitting, he has stopped undercutting the ball and has picked up pointers from an ex-Indian infielder, Joey Sewell. Says Piersall: "Sewell's made a thinking hitter out of me. Now I vary my stance according to what the pitcher throws." Last week, at the end of a blazingly-game stretch in which he hit .515 with 34 hits in 66 at bats, Piersall was doing exactly what his long-suffering wife Mary has been urging for years: "Keep quiet and let your bat do your talking for you."

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