Cardinals and Yankees Hit Midseason as Pennant Favorites in 1926
Content from the NY Daily News - Sunday July, 4, 1926
In This Edition
- Cards Rarin' to Nab First Pennant
- Yankees Now Best Bet to Nail Flag
- Ray Moss, Ex-Robins, Making Good
- Our Yanks Win One for Change From Senators
CARDS RARIN’ TO NAB FIRST PENNANT
OL’ FIGHTING SPIRIT KEEPING HORNSBY’S OUTFIT IN RACE
Rogers’s Leadership Big Factor in Club’s Rise.
By WILL MURPHY.
The half-way mark of the baseball season, which is close upon us, brings into sight one of the livliest possibilities the old game has seen in many a long day—the chance that a National League pennant may rest this fall in St. Louis, the only city in the major leagues which has never had a winner.
Rogers Hornsby demonstrates the fielding intensity that made him both the Cardinals' star player and manager in 1926.
It is a good chance, too. The Cardinals are not a great team, but neither is anything else now enrolled in the National league. But these Cardinals, under the leadership of the dynamic Rogers Hornsby, are showing more of the championship spirit than St. Louis has seen for years. In a wide-open race like the current scramble, where the first six clubs have seldom been more than six games apart, fighting spirit counts heavily.
The club that can take a few defeats without losing faith in itself is the club to tie to in one of these riots. With a half dozen teams milling around like fighters in a battle royal, every contender is bound to be knocked horizontal every so often.
Have Fighting Spirit.
The club that picks itself up, brushes the dust of combat from its uniforms and sails in again is going to have a share in the argument right up to the final bell. The Cardinals seem to have that sort of india-rubber resilience. They have taken plenty of bumps, but they got up again every time.
Victor Keen and Bill Sherdel , two of the Cardinals' dependable starting pitchers during the 1926 season.
A world’s series in St. Louis would be highly diverting.
Would the carnivorous fans of St. Louis be able to hold themselves in? Tossing the eight-ounce pop bottle has been the favorite sport out there since baseball began, and there is no telling what feats of marksmanship a world’s series might bring forth. Steel helmets for umpires may yet be worn.
Another possibility is that the wild, wild fans of Sportsman’s Park will not believe it. They have been kidded by so many St. Louis teams in the past that their skepticism is deep-rooted. If the Cardinals do win a pennant, it will have to be confirmed by the President before the report gains general credence in St. Louis.
Breadon Real Guy.
But if Mister John Heydler’s emblematic banner does have to be shipped west of the Mississippi, what this writer wants to see is Sam Breadon’s face when he hears the result of the deciding game. There, friends and fellow countrymen, will be a grin worth while!
Sam Breadon , Cardinals owner whose faith in Rogers Hornsby fueled St. Louis' surprising pennant chase.
The president and main financial prop of the St. Louis club is one of those baseball fans that you read about. He is a sportsman. Perhaps he’s the one they named Sportsman’s park after. Acidulous critics say they didn’t call it Sportsmen’s park because they knew darn well there wasn’t more than one sportsman in the town, but that’s probably just another libel on a great city.
He comes by his baseball interest naturally. Sam Breadon is a New Yorker born and bred, and when he was around here the sand lots weren’t so scarce as they are today. In 1904 he took his youthful hopes to St. Louis, drawn by the chance of making his fortune at the World’s Fair in dispensing peanuts to the sight-seeing multitude.
In Auto Business.
He might have made his fortune had he stuck to peanuts—Harry Stevens turned the trick—but the young Breadon turned to automobiles, and now he controls the distribution of a high-priced car over a huge slice of the middle west and is a director in the manufacturing company. Some years ago he was able to ride his baseball hobby without worrying about the cost, and he bought into the Cardinals.
Branch Rickey , former Cardinals manager whose organizational work helped lay the foundation for St. Louis' 1926 pennant contender.
The Cards weren’t so much until Branch Rickey, master of baseball theory, but not so good for results, gave over the managership last year and Breadon had Rogers Hornsby installed. These two—Breadon and Hornsby—make a pair to draw to. They are for each other and for the club, which may help to explain why the Cardinals have done as well as they have.
Team’s Success Also Due to Good Hurling.
Gets Results.
Hornsby has picked up a player here and there, but he has not added any great strength to the club that Rickey left him. He has simply drawn the best out of what he had, which is a workable recipe for victory almost anywhere.
The rock on which the Cardinals stand is the pitching staff. Charles Flint Rhem, Victor Keen and Bill Sherdel are the mainstays. None of them was ever thought to be a great pitcher, but Hornsby uses them regularly and they have thriven mightily on a diet of confidence and hard work.
Jim Bottomley and Ray Blades provided much of the offensive punch behind the Cardinals' pennant drive.
Any team with Hornsby on it would have batting strength, but Jim Bottomley, Ray Blades and Taylor Douthit are fine clubbers, too. Hornsby found a sharp-fielding shortstop to work with him around second base in Tommy Thevenow. That, and Lester Bell’s arrival as a third baseman, just about filled up the Cardinal weak spots.
It’s a useful outfit, this Cardinal team, for a race such as the National league is putting on right now. The heated month of July will give us a pretty accurate line on whether it is the team that will bring that pennant smile to Sam Breadon’s face.
YANKEES NOW BEST BET TO NAIL FLAG
HUGMEN GOING GREAT AS MID-SEASON NEARS
Heavy Slugging Carries Team Toward Victory.
By MARSHALL HUNT.
Yankees stars Babe Ruth , Mark Koenig , Bob Meusel , and rookie Tony Lazzeri , key contributors to New York's first-place club in 1926.
There seems to be no logical proof that the baseball season won't be half done soon. As the boys up our way so quaintly say: “You can’t run much behind the figures.”
The figures seem to indicate that the middle of the baseball season is approaching, and so, perhaps, very little can be done about it, one way or another.
These figures appear rigid and determined little fellows, totally oblivious, entirely unheeding, to and of stretches of the imagination and certain circumstances.
Your correspondent returned from a recent baseball game to fashion this contribution; returned to his bivouac in light overcoat and with chapped hands—to write something about this baseball season being half over. Your commissioner, at the hour of composition, firmly believed it was approximately the middle of March. He pictured flurries of snow and news of a coal shortage.
All in Season.
But the persistent figures plainly decreed the baseball season was about 50 per cent. complete and that there have been divers and sundry disappointments, and numerous occasions for joy since the alleged summer got under way.
Regardless of weather conditions, National League and American League have been giving folks something to talk about. Many a dull evening might have been spent about the domestic fireside had not the Yankees stepped into the American league lead and Babe Ruth nearing his 1921 record.
Yankees manager Miller Huggins guided New York to the top of the American League during the 1926 campaign.
And many a Giants rooter let his spareribs and kraut cool on the evening table while he gestured with fork or spoon and explained to the little woman why the Giants are in the second division.
It has been an interesting half-season. What the next half will offer of course isn’t known, except that the Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Phillies will finish in last place.
Hit, and How!
When this was written the Yankees were leading the American league by a healthy margin. This writer was one of few New York baseball chroniclers to pick them to win a pennant. There seems to be no reason why they shouldn’t.
The pitching has been spotty, but the Yanks are a bunch of young and old men who know how to swing from that part of the anatomy which means hits, and plenty of hits will win 'most any old ball game.
The first half of the season has again endeared Babe Ruth to the country. Never before did G. Herman try harder to play the game than he did since the season opened. A headache, a sore throat, two crippled legs! He has suffered plenty of ailments BUT—guts! He stayed in the game and not only broke up many a clash with home runs or lesser hits but hobbled after fly balls even though he was fearfully pained.
The new infield was wabbly at times, but it survived. Master Mark Koenig was quite dandy about mussing up ground balls.
Yankees reserves Mike Gazella and Aaron Ward provided valuable depth during New York's pennant push.
The Yanks were fortunate in having an abundance of reserve strength. Mike Gazella found out that holding down Joe Dugan’s place at third was quite to his liking when Joe was hurt, and then there were Aaron Ward, Spencer Adams, Ben Paschal and others who helped.
The work of Bob Meusel, now laid up with an injury, and Tony Lazzeri, slugging recruit, also must be mentioned.
Well, the Yanks just seem to be a team that ought to win the pennant easily if only the talent would learn how not to blow games in the ninth inning.
Sox Improving.
Chicago’s White Sox showed strength lately. The Philadelphia Athletics wasted a lot of chances. The Cleveland Indians came to the front for a while, the same team that Tris Speaker had last year, by the way, but little should be expected of them. Ty Cobb seems to be no manager of things in Detroit, the Washington Senators have let their daubers down to their heels and George Sisler’s Browns and the Boston Red Sox don’t seem to figure a great deal in the race so far.
Ray Moss, ex-Robins, Making Good.
Former Dodgers pitcher Ray Moss found success with Jersey City after being optioned to the International League.
Ray Moss, who was sent to the Jersey City Skeeters International League team on option by the Dodgers, is making good as a pitcher for the Skeeters. The former Dodger won six of his first seven starts for Patsy Donovan’s tribe and is among the league leaders in effectiveness. Moss had loads of stuff while with the Dodgers, but had a tendency to become wild and Wilbert Robinson thought it a good idea to farm the young man out for a year.
OUR YANKS WIN ONE FOR CHANGE FROM SENATORS
By MARSHALL HUNT.
Washington Senators, July 3.—With Babe Ruth fretting on the bench again, the crippled Yankees today played their second game of the series with the Senators. Herb Pennock was the Yankee pitcher and Emilio Palmero, another left hander, was on the rubber for Washington. The attendance was about 10,000.
The Yankees won, 5 to 4.
Waite Hoyt left today for Rochester to have his right arm treated by Dr. Knight, a specialist in ball players' ailments. The Yankee pitcher had his elbow X-rayed this morning and it was revealed that there had developed what surgeons call a sac. Hoyt cannot raise his throwing arm without pain. It is believed that Waite will not be able to pitch for a week.
The Yanks' heavy artillery got going in the third and drove out three runs. Hits by Mark Koenig, Ben Paschal, Tony Lazzeri, a base on balls to Joe Dugan and a wild throw by Pitcher Palmero figured in the scoring.
Lou Gehrig , nicknamed "Buster Lou," emerged as one of the Yankees' most dangerous hitters during the 1926 season.
In the fourth the Yankees added another run on doubles by Lou Gehrig and Lazzeri and Bucky Harris's error.
The Senators kept pecking away and drew up to within one run of the Yanks in the seventh. Sam Rice doubled and Joe Judge tripled for the Senators in the seventh and Sad Sam Jones replaced Pennock. A couple of pinch hitters drove Judge plateward.
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