Year of the Homer (Contd.)

"Watch what happens when it warms up," said Detroit Pitching Coach Tom Ferrick late this spring. "The bats get a little slower, and the home-run production falls off." But last week, as spring bowed out to summer, major league sluggers, far hotter than the weather, kept whaling home runs at a prodigious pace (TIME, June 23). In six days they belted 120, boosted the season total for both leagues to 1,151.

Detroit and Cleveland, fighting for first place in the American League, clubbed nine between them in one game; Detroit, out-homered 5-4, won anyway, 15-7. The St. Louis Cardinals' Stan Musial walloped two against San Francisco to give him a lifetime total of 1,292 extra-base hits, within swatting distance of Babe Ruth's 1,356. Team of the week: the Milwaukee Braves, with 15 home runs. Man of the week: New York Yankee Outfielder Roger Maris, who hit four to raise his season's total to 27 and put him twelve games ahead of Babe Ruth's 1927 pace when he blasted out the most elusive record of all--60 home runs.

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