The World Turned Upside Down

O'Malley's Screen is still there, in Los Angeles, and batters are still lofting chip shots over and against it (especially Frank Thomas of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who hit five home runs last week during the Pirates' first visit to the Coliseum), but if you can drag your eyes away from that strange left field for a moment, there are a few other notes from baseball worth your attention.

The 1958 season moved into May, and the situation was very strange. The first were last and the last first, the famous were obscure and names no one knew were in the headlines. Washington and Kansas City, accustomed to fighting for last place, vied instead for second. The St. Louis Cardinals, a strong second choice for the National League pennant if their hero, Stan Musial, could hold up, watched Musial sustain a .500-plus batting average and slid deeper and deeper into last place as they watched.

The Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox were appraised by Casey Stengel as the strongest challengers to his New York Yankees' hold on the American League championship, and there the two Sox, White and Red, unmatching but side by side, were at the bottom of the American League race, as far away from the Yankees as they could get. In the National League the world champion Milwaukee Braves had started well, and then, possibly embarrassed by the second-division clubs keeping them company in the first division, stumbled politely and fell back. Up on top were the Giants, the Pirates and, of all people, the Chicago Cubs. Way down, barely above the Cardinals, were the Los Angeles Dodgers, the club of right-handed hitters, unable to take advantage of their screen, patently designed to help a right-handed-hitting ball club.

Earlier reports from Southern California insisted that the Screen Writers' Guild had had nothing whatever to do with the Saga of Left Field, which was strictly a Metro-Dodger-O'Malley production, but it was 1-10, out and out, as the horse-race people say, that Hollywood writers had more than a little to do with the major league script in the other towns around the leagues. How else to explain the bizarre twists that baseball's early-season story line had taken? This was straight Hollywood. You could almost hear the story conferences:

"Let's do things in the American League a little different this year, Freddie. Lay off that Mantle-Williams bit. It's been done to death. Dig up a new face."

The new face was dug up: a broad, big-chinned face belonging to Robert Henry Cerv, a 32-year-old outfielder with—who? Kansas City? Wonderful! The old rags-to-riches routine! Cerv's qualifications were ideal. Between trips to the minors he had spent six years as a part-time bench warmer with the New York Yankees, watching Mickey Mantle rise to stardom. Then he was traded off to the Kansas City Athletics, strictly a nothing. But give a smart screen writer his head and you come up with Cerv The Home Run Hitter, kicking Kansas City off to a flamboyant start with wallop after wallop into the distant outfield seats.

When the Kansas Citys went into Yankee Stadium for their first series of the season against the Yankees they were in second place, the New Yorkers' closest challengers. And there, on the scoreboard atop the outfield wall, a few yards southeast of Mickey Mantle's center-field stomping grounds, there, under the label League Leaders, was Bob Cerv's name: first in home runs, first in runs batted in. And there was Mantle, batting a feeble .279. Oh, just perfect. Naturally, on his very first time at bat in Yankee Stadium, Cerv hit a large home run, high and far to left field.

There were other story conferences:

"Let's jazz up the National League a little. What about those Chicago Cubs? Last place? Rewrite the script. Put them first. Never mind Milwaukee. I know all about Milwaukee. Let's have Milwaukee in first place and then the Cubs beat them three straight times to take the league lead. Who's going too far? Use your imagination, Freddie. You got to do these things right. Now, let's see. Milwaukee has this big lead in this one game and then the Cubs score six runs in a dramatic seventh-inning rally to tie the score. And then they win it with a home run in the last of the ninth. You don't like that, Freddie? So quit. Go ahead. This is the way I'm writing it. Now, we need a star, a sensation, a big home run hitter, leading the league. Ernie Banks? No, he's been done before. Here, Walls. Lee Walls. I don't care how many he hit all last year. Six? Is that all? Great! He'll be sensational. Have him hit nine in the first two, three weeks of the season. Now get this script in shape and send it off to Chicago."

Perhaps not even Hollywood would buy it, but there it was. The Chicago Cubs, imprecise apples of Phil Wrigley's precision-loving eye, did beat the Milwaukee Braves three straight times to take the league lead, did score six runs in a dramatic seventh-inning rally to tie the score, did win on a home run in the last of the ninth. And Lee Walls (responding perfectly on cue) did hit nine home runs in the first two or three weeks of the season. The Cubs were out on top of the National League, looking for the moment like a solid ball team, with strong pitchers and powerful hitters and fine-looking rookies.