Two on Top

An old baseball bromide holds that the team leading its league on Independence Day will win the pennant. Indeed, in the 67 seasons since 1901, the National League leader on July 4 has won it 40 times, the American League leader a full 45. And that's how it looks again this year. In one of the dullest seasons in years--with the result that attendance is down 5% from 1967 --neither league can lay claim to anything remotely resembling a pennant race. In the National League last week, the St. Louis Cardinals were coasting along with a steady 61-game lead; in the American, the Detroit Tigers were an even brighter prospect with an eight-game bulge.

Flying high comes easy for the World Champion Cards, who took the league title last season by 10 1/2 games. The Tigers have not won a pennant in 22 years, and their domination of the American League this season comes as an almost inexplicable surprise. Their team batting average is .227. Their most valuable player (and just about the only one who is healthy) is the team physician, Russell M. Wright. Regular Rightfielder Al Kaline, eleven times an All-Star, has been out of action since May 25 with a broken arm. Third Baseman Don Wert is recovering from a concussion, the result of a scalping in Cleveland last week. Leftfielder Willie Horton (.287, 18 homers) wears a brace to support his weak Achilles tendon. All-Star Catcher Bill Freehan is playing with a sore arm. Outfielder Jim Northrup with a sore knee, and Centerfielder Mickey Stanley with a sore arm plus a sore knee.

Still, the Tigers keep winning--nine straight games at the season's start, 24 of their last 36. Pitcher Denny Mc-Lain, 24, who wore spectacles last season and lost 16 games while winning 17, has switched to contact lenses. "I'm seeing things I didn't see before," he says, and his record this season shows visible improvement: a league-leading 14-2. The unreliability of Detroit's other front-line pitchers is offset by the strength of its bullpen: among them, Relievers Pat Dobson, Jon Warden, John Killer and Fred Lasher boast a record of 15 victories and nine saves against only five defeats.

"All 25 players are charging," says Mickey Stanley. "Every day, it is somebody else who gets the job done. That may sound like 'High School Harry,' but that's the case." In one game against the second-place Cleveland Indians last week, Northrup forgot his aching knee long enough to clout a brace of grand-slam homers and tie a big-league record.* In another, it was Dick Tracewski, a .170 batter, who hit a game-winning homer to beat the Indians 4-1. "Now I have nothing to look forward to for the rest of the year," said Tracewski with the coyness of a contender. Nothing, of course, but that World Series check.

*Set originally by the New York Yankees' Tony Lazzeri in 1936 and shared by four other players, including, remarkably enough, a pitcher: Tony Cloninger, currently of the Cincinnati Reds.

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