Who Needs to See?

Lunching in a Chinese restaurant last week, New York Yankee President Dan Topping broke a cookie in half, pulled out his fortune, and winced. "Chance," it said, "governs everything."

As Wilmer Dean Chance himself would say: "You better believe it." Five months and 150-odd games ago, the American League set forth to find a champion. Last week it was still looking. In three days the lead changed hands three times, with the three top teams--the Yankees, the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox--separated by only a half-game. Very unnerving--but great fun for the also rans. And nobody was getting a bigger chuckle out of all that chaos than Dean Chance, 23, a righthanded pitcher for the sixth-place Los Angeles Angels. Last week Chance made life miserable for the red-hot (12 victories in 16 games) Yankees with a nifty two-hitter, 7-0.

Don't Look. This week it will be Baltimore's turn and then Chicago's. Poor Orioles and White Sox. So far this season, Chance has won 19 games, including five two-hitters, a three-hitter and four four-hitters. He has lost only seven, four of them 1-0 heartbreakers. His ten shutouts put him within striking distance of the 54-year-old American League record of 13, and his earned-run average is an astonishing 1.49. The last big-league pitcher to go through a season with an ERA that low was Walter Johnson in 1919. To top it off, Chance seems best under pressure. His record against the Yankees: one run in 50 innings.

A rangy six-footer, Chance has a sinking fastball, a roundhouse country curve, and a curious quirk in his pitching motion: he turns his back on the batter during his windup. "Never take your eyes off home plate" is a cardinal rule of pitching, but Chance shrugs: "It don't make too much difference if I look at the plate or not, 'cause I don't see too well outa my left eye anyhow." Maybe not, but it makes a big difference to the hitters. "They don't know whether he's going to hit the plate or them," explains a rival pitcher. Actually, Chance's control is excellent: in 254 innings this year, he has walked just 73 men.

Please Pay. A farm boy sensation in Wooster, Ohio, Chance won 51 high school games, lost only one, signed a minor-league contract with--irony of ironies--the Baltimore Orioles. "It's a good thing the Orioles let him get away," sighed a Yankee player last week, "or there wouldn't be any pennant race at all." Drafted by the Angels in 1961, Chance won 27 games and lost 28 over the next two seasons, picked up a reputation as a slicker at snooker and gin, hit the gossip columns regularly by palling around with Playboy Pitcher Bo Belinsky. Last spring Chance announced that he was "a settled-down fellow," told the Angels he wanted a raise to $18,000. There was some small argument, but he won; the Angels even sweetened the pie by another $7,000 last June. All that did was whet Chance's appetite.

By last week he was demanding $400 to let sportswriters interview him ("There's this poor little church back home, see . . ."), laying plans for an off-season tour of poolrooms in the U.S. and Japan ("Two shows and $600 a day"), and threatening to quit baseball if the Angels don't pay him $50,000 next year. "The kind of year I've had, I'm gonna get paid for," he said. "You better believe it."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.