Scorecard

"You had to get used to his clue words or you couldn't understand him," Anderson says. "Like one word might mean a play, only he never told you. You had to figure it out."

Anderson learned, for example, that "butcher boy" meant that the batter was supposed to chop down on the ball and thus make sure he hit it on the ground to protect the runner. Stengel explained that one. But there were other occasions.

"I remember once," says Anderson, "Casey came out to the mound to me in a bunt situation and said, 'O.K., now, you know what I want you to do,' and turned around and walked off. Only I didn't know what he wanted and I didn't do it. When I got back to the dugout he said, 'What I wanted you to do was make the first pitch a fast ball high inside so he couldn't bunt.' I knew after that."

When you learn like that, it stays with you.

THE ANGRY MORONS

Littering the ice at professional hockey games can be a gesture in fun—in Detroit it has become a ritual for one fan to throw a small octopus on the ice before the start of a Stanley Cup playoff game—but it can also be extremely dangerous. Most dangerous is the increasing practice of tossing heated pennies or shooting paper clips onto the ice. These freeze almost instantly and are hazardous to players.

Just a few weeks ago high-scoring Gilles Tremblay, a swift-skating Montreal Canadien wing, was body-checked and, while reeling from the contact, caught his skate on a penny embedded in the ice. Result: a compound fracture of the leg that finished him for the season. And a few nights ago Frank Milne, survivor of 15 years of pro hockey without serious injury, skated over a penny while playing for the Oakville Oaks of the Ontario Hockey Association's Senior League. Result: another compound leg fracture.

Boston Garden officials are offering $100 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of such litter-bugs. Madison Square Garden is conducting a similar drive. One hopes that prosecution of an offender will result in conviction and severe punishment.

Punishment more severe, let us say, than that suffered by a Chicagoan who tossed his car keys onto the ice and, red-faced, had to go to the officials' room after the game to reclaim them so that he could drive home.