Matchup Of A Classic Pair

The meaningful confrontations in sport come along so seldom that when one arrives it transcends quick-buck promoters, deep-thinking statisticians and television spielers. The genuine events feed on anticipation and argument by the fans themselves. Swaps vs. Nashua at Washington Park. John Landy and Roger Bannister in "the mile of the century" at Vancouver. The professional debuts of Pancho Gonzalez and Wilt Chamberlain against Jack Kramer and Bill Russell. Michigan State vs. Notre Dame.

Next week another event comes along that is already surrounded by enough glamour to assure it a place alongside those fine confrontations of the past. This one is called merely "Gibson against McLain" and it has been building since the middle of July. The matter of which team, the St. Louis Cardinals or Detroit Tigers, will win the 64th World Series somehow seems secondary to the question both devoted baseball fans and people who have never seen either man or team perform in person have been asking for months: "Who do you like, Gibson or McLain?" By now you are supposed to have cultivated your prejudices to such a degree that you can take a positive stance on one side of the question or the other. Do you like Denny McLain, the clever and delightfully unpredictable young organist who pitched the Detroit Tigers to their first pennant in 23 years while winning 31 games himself, or do you like Bob Gibson, the agile, complete athlete who strung zeroes across National League scoreboards all season long to build one of the coolest earned run averages the game has ever seen?

But this World Series is much more than Gibson against McLain or McLain against Gibson. The St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers are fine, exciting and tough teams possessing genuine folk heroes capable of playing baseball with a flair and style not seen in many recent Series. This is, for instance, the first World Series for Al Kaline after 16 years of excellence frequently interrupted by injury; the last for Roger Maris, the man who. It is a Series bringing together the two most highly regarded all-round catchers in the game, Tim Mc-Carver of St. Louis and Bill Freehan of Detroit. Louis Clark Brock, the man who a year ago stole everything in Boston but the light in the Old North Church, is going to try to put his act together again, and if you like power Detroit has several men who can knock a ball out of any park, as the saying goes, including Yellowstone. Curt Flood of the Cards and Mickey Stanley of the Tigers, the two finest centerfielders working today, could turn the whole thing into a spectacular defensive show. Even the parks themselves, Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis and Tiger Stadium in Detroit, are interesting and will probably have an effect on the outcome.

Perhaps the best thing about this Series, though, is that it has a chance to save what has been a very dull season. Many things went wrong in baseball in 1968; they included too much pitching, sinking attendance, a lack of responsible leadership and no pennant races at all. By Mother's Day everyone knew that Detroit and St. Louis were going to win, because they were obviously the two best teams and had enough spirit to take them over whatever hills might rise in front of them.

In a season that lasts 173 days Detroit and St. Louis were each in first place for all but 15 of them, and that is not the sort of competition to spur pennant fever in the poor town stuck with a fourth-place team 20 games out. St. Louis entered the season with its personality and style already developed. The Cards had speed, defense, power, pitching and spirit and they wanted to get themselves into another World Series so that they might become the first National League team to win consecutive world championships since John McGraw's New York Giants of 46 years ago. Detroit, on the other hand, started the year with the unenviable reputation of being a team that got things lodged in its throat when the going got sticky. But what did the 1968 Tiger team do? It developed a method for winning that was the direct antithesis of its past reputation. If you went to Tiger Stadium—and more than two million people did—you could lean back, set your alarm clock for the seventh inning and when you woke up all hell would be breaking loose. In one-third of the games they won the Tigers were trailing in the seventh inning or later. They suffered an abnormal number of injuries but heroes kept popping up, and Tiger followers fell back in love with their team because of its new and totally unexpected image.

It is appropriate that in this year of the pitcher it will be Gibson and Mc-Lain warming up for the first game Wednesday afternoon in St. Louis. Each has dominated his own league and each is certain to be named Most Valuable Player. That has never happened. Of equal importance is the fact that each is chasing history in a Series that already has history lingering all around it. Should a man sit down at a Hammond X-77 organ in a melancholy mood and try to conjure up the names and deeds of past 30-game winners who pitched in a World Series, he might shove in all the stops and quit in fright. Should that man be Dennis McLain, he might be doubly troubled. Leopold Stokowski, Charlie Chaplin, Walter P. Chrysler and Thomas E. Dewey, like McLain, were born under the sign of Aries and the horoscope for Oct. 2 says "difficult." Further, when McLain plunks his cap down on whatever color his hair happens to be that day and walks to the mound he joins only seven other 30-game winners ever to pitch in a World Series. To pronounce their names aloud is to hear the pounding of a drum: Christy Mathewson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Jack Coombs, Smokey Joe Wood, Lefty Grove, Jim Bagby, Dizzy Dean. None had a losing record in a Series. The seven won 23 Series games while losing 12.

Bob Gibson, like Richard Burton, Walter Cronkite, Charles de Gaulle and Pablo Picasso, was born under the sign of Scorpio. His horoscope for the day on which he will meet Denny McLain suggests that he "make his motives quite clear." One clear motive is a record. Should Gibson pitch a complete game, it will be his sixth in a row. He will stand alone as the steadiest pitcher in Series annals. The matchup of McLain and Gibson, in other words, is not, as the pitchers themselves might say, "just another Series game." Already the overtones are classic.

The best judges of that are the other players. They are talking about almost nothing else but the McLain-Gibson duel. Jim (Mudcat) Grant, a man who won two games in the 1965 Series for Minnesota and now has moved over to Los Angeles in the National League, says, "This will be the best matchup in a World Series in a long time. Both teams are real strong, with St. Louis having a little of everything. But I think Detroit may be one of the strongest teams in baseball in a long time. The Tigers have average speed, good pitching and they have the big thing going for them—incentive. I'd say Gibson is the key. If he pitches the way he has been, he wins three games. That makes St. Louis tough—mighty tough."

Hank Aguirre, for 10 years a Tiger and now a Dodger, says, "The Tigers have tremendous power and maybe more important is the fact that last year they felt they should have won the pennant and didn't. This has driven them all year. They gained great determination by losing last year and they never lost that determination this season. Detroit sends so many good batters at you—seven tough hitters at all times and every one with a club capable of clearing the fence." Ken Boyer, a former Cardinal who has played in both leagues and is a fine student of the game, likes Gibson over McLain, observing, " St. Louis has the great one in Gibson."

Many people feel that Gibson has an advantage over McLain because of his experience in two previous Series. McLain, however, is not something that just arrived full blown at Detroit in the spring of this season. He has pitched in Busch Memorial Stadium before, and his performance there ranks very high in the happenings of recent seasons. He was the starting pitcher for the American League in the 1966 All-Star Game in 105� heat, and the National League batting order that he faced was formidable: Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Henry Aaron, Willie McCovey, Ron Santo, Joe Torre, Jim Lefebvre, Leo Cardenas and, just to make it a little tougher, Curt Flood as a pinch hitter in the third inning. McLain pitched three perfect innings against that lineup with only two balls being hit out of the infield. He was fast and sharp—bing, bang, up, down, who's next?