Brat's New World

"Nobody ever got further with less talent," Eddie Stanky has said of his eleven-year playing career in the majors--during which he batted only .268 but played in three World Series and earned a well-deserved reputation as the meanest, toughest, loudest scrapper in the business. "The Brat" was an expert at collecting bases on balls, breaking up double plays, and heckling and generally enraging opponents. Now 49 and in his second year as manager of the Chicago White Sox, who last week were leading the American League by 4 1/2 games, Stanky insists that he is as smooth and mellow as V.S.O.P. Napoleon. "How can a blue-eyed man like me be a villain?" he asks. "I have a wonderful personality."

Maybe he does. Anybody who can take a team that doesn't have a single batter hitting over .280 and turn it into a pennant contender is bound to be a personality of some sort.

Scoring from First. "A manager's job," says Stanky, "is 90% public relations and 10% managing. My responsibility is to entertain the gentlemen of the press, radio and television, make up the line-up card, then fall asleep on the bench and let the boys play. After a while, some player wakes me up and says, 'Skip, we just won the game 5-4.' " There may once have been a manager who ran his team that way--the description somehow sounds familiar--but it certainly was not Eddie Stanky.

The White Sox are probably the only team in baseball that has to weigh in for work; a coach guards the scales and prescribes for excess lard. Stanky maneuvers ballplayers as if they were robots and he owned the patents: he has been known to use as many as three pinch hitters for one turn at bat. In his "gogo" offense, even pitchers steal bases, and a batter who reaches first base is considered to be in scoring position. Against Baltimore last week, Chicago Leftfielder Jimmy Stewart scored from first on a single to leftfield--because the Orioles never imagined he would try.

The White Sox do have superb pitching. Joel Horlen won his ninth game in ten decisions last week, and has a 1.96 earned-run average; Gary Peters has a 10-3 record and an E.R.A. of 2.23; Tommy John is 6-5 and 2.43. But even that does not explain why a ball club with a team batting average of .239 is way out in front of the American League. "Alertness, enthusiasm and confidence" is Stanky's explanation--which translates into hustle, bustle and bluster and sums up the White Sox manager as well as his team.

It is also a pretty fair description of Eddie's sometime teammate (on the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants) and current chief rival for the affections of Chicagoans: Manager Leo ("The Lip") Durocher of the Chicago Cubs--the hottest team in the National League. Beating the Cincinnati Reds 6-3 last week for their twelfth victory in 13 games, the Cubs climbed to within one-half game of first place, set Chicagoans buzzing about the possibility of an all-Chicago World Series--first in 61 years. But if The Brat and The Lip do clash in the Series, it won't be a block party.

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