The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant

The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant (By Robin Roberts and C. Paul Rogers III. 390 pp. Temple University Press. $29.95).

Some pennant-winning baseball teams fade inexorably from memory; others resonate through the years. The heroics of some abide only in the minds of the faithful few; others capture a wider audience during their moment of sunshine and glow forever.

Why this is so is a difficult question, one that Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts and his co-author do not address in this book on the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies. Still, the Whiz Kids' accomplishment is one of those that endures, and this book tells their story well. It is, in fact a three-base hit: one part Roberts, recollections, one part reminiscences by his teammates and others, and one part Rogers' narrative. Together, they create a very pleasing whole.

The Phillies of the 1930s and '40s were woeful, habitually finishing in the depths of the National League. They even suffered the ignominy of having their owner thrown out of the game for gambling. His misdeeds (and stupidity, for he bet the Phils to win) led to the club's sale to Robert M. Carpenter in 1943. Carpenter had the good sense to hire Herb Pennock as general manager. Pennock set out to build a farm system and eventually put the parent club in the hands of manager Eddie Sawyer.

The young Phillies finished sixth in 1948, when Sawyer took over in midseason, and third in 1949. The next spring they became the Whiz kids, a moniker generally credited to sports editor Harry Grayson and perhaps expropriated from the University of Illinois basketball team of the mid-'40s. At any rate, the Phillies took control of the '50 pennant race in August, nearly squandered their advantage in September and won the flag by beating Brooklyn in extra innings on the last day of the season.

That the Whiz Kids lost the World Series to the Yankees in four games has not threatened their place in baseball's memory bank. And yet, as Roberts notes correctly, the Dodgers were the era's best team. Had it not been for Richie Ashburn's peg to the plate, Dick Sisler's 10th-inning homer and Roberts' clutch pitching, "we might well have been just another Cinderella team that fell short."

Baseball By the Numbers. A Guide to the Uniform Numbers of Major League Teams (By Mark Stang and Linda Harkness. 1,125 pp. Scarecrow Press. $85).

Baseball owners, who resisted radio and later television for fear that broadcasting games would cut into attendance, earlier had refused to adorn players' uniforms with numbers. Owners figured that fans who could memorize numbers would have no reason to buy scorecards. Players resisted numbers, too, arguing that they would look like convicts. But fans demanded change, and this time they won. The Yankees assigned numbers in 1929, all other A.L. teams followed suit in 1931 and N.L. teams did so by the end of 1932.

So who wore what number when? That is the basic question this heavy book answers in incredible detail, some 50,000 numbers in all, gleaned exclusively from scorecards. For each team, there are three lists: a year-by-year breakdown, listing each season's players in numerical order; an alphabetical list of all players with their numbers, and a numerical list, tracking all players who wore a particular number, arranged chronologically.

Not every player who wore a major league uniform is here. And the lists do end with 1992. So revisions and updates will have to wait for a second edition.

The Spirit of St. Andrews (By Alister McKenzie. 269 pp. Sleeping Bear Press. $24.95).

When Alister McKenzie, the foremost golf architect of his day, died in 1934, his obituary noted that he had recently completed a manuscript called "The Spirit of St. Andrews." Somehow, plans to publish went awry, and the manuscript disappeared, only to be discovered a short while ago among the papers of McKenzie's son.

Published now exactly as written, complete with photographs from the 1930s, the book is a remarkable document and a straightforward explanation of McKenzie's design principles. Some may be startled to read his insistence that the number of bunkers should be minimal and that no golfer should have to suffer the indignity of losing a ball.

But McKenzie's views, even six decades later, deserve a certain respect. He designed more than 400 courses, including Cypress Point, Pasatiempo and Augusta National. And, as a player, he started breaking 80 when he was past 60.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Sporting News Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning