The Week (june 1-7)

AL EAST

What's right with the red sox? asked a Boston Globe headline. Well, during a 5-1 week, almost everything. In need of an added starter, Manager Darrell Johnson called on Dick Pole, a fastballer from Trout Creek, Mich. who had been sitting idly in the bullpen. Pole baffled the White Sox 4-0 on three hits. Red Sox batters also did little wrong. After Boston overtook Chicago to win 7-6, Leftfielder Bernie Carbo said, "This had to be the most thrilling game of the season." What made it so thrilling was Boston scoring four times in the bottom of the ninth. During that uprising three pinch hitters in a row—Carbo, Tim McCarver and Cecil Cooper—hit safely. Rick Burleson applied the finishing touch with a two-out single. The Red Sox also beat the Twins 11-9 ( Doug Griffin hitting his first home run in two years), 13-10 (although outhit 14-8, Boston got two home runs and six RBIs from Dwight Evans ) and then won 3-1 behind Bill Lee 's tight pitching. No one, though, was righter than Fred Lynn , who batted .417.

Vaulting from fourth place to second, the Yankees swept six in a row. In five games they had 10 or more hits, and they batted .303 and scored 37 runs during the week to lead the majors with a .269 season average and 4.8 runs per game. Bobby Bonds , who hit .385, bopped five homers and drove in 10 runs. He also set big-league records by hitting lead-off home runs Nos. 29 and 30. Bonds, who had been at. 197 after 32 games, brought his average up to .253, led the majors with 15 homers and tied for the league RBI lead with 41. Rudy May and Pat Dobson both earned their fifth and sixth victories.

For Cleveland , 3-3, the big stick was wielded by Manager Frank Robinson , whose two three-run homers sank Texas 7-5. "The team gets a bigger kick out of it than I do," he said. "I guess you might say we're opposites: I excite them and they excite me." They excited him most when they beat Kansas City 8-7, tying the score on rookie Rick Manning 's triple in the ninth and winning on Buddy Bell 's 11th-inning homer.

The Orioles ' anemic offense—their .234 team batting average is the second lowest in either league—was at its worst as they split their first four games. During that period they hit .184, and all their runs in a 3-2 win over the Royals came on sacrifice flies. Then the Baltimore attack sprang to life for a 7-3 victory over Kansas City , the Orioles ' highest run production in four weeks.

Detroit 's Mickey Lolich , who does most things right-handed, gave further proof that he was right about being a left-handed pitcher. In raising his strikeout total to 2,586 Lolich moved past Warren Spahn into the No. 5 spot on the alltime list and supplanted him as the No. 1 lefty. During a 4-3 week for the Tigers, Lolich won twice, Lerrin LaGrow beat the A's 3-0 and Willie Horton hit two more homers.

Attendance in the majors is up almost 500,000 from last year, and nowhere in the AL has it climbed as much as in Milwaukee , where the Brewers are 160,000 fans ahead. But artistic success lagged behind. The Brewers wasted a 5-1 lead in the first game of a doubleheader with the Royals , losing it 13-6, and blew the second 11-5.

Milwaukee pitching, which had been superb early on, continued to wilt and the team's ERA, second best in the league at 3.10 on May 1, soared to 4.09, next to last. The Brewers, 2-5, bottomed out with a 13-4 loss to their Sacramento Solon farmhands as Ed Sprague was rocked for 10 runs and four consecutive home runs.

BOS 28-19 NY 27-24 DET 23-24
MIL 23-26 CLEV 22-27 BALT 21-28

AL WEST