1957 SEASON WRAP UP
AMERICAN LEAG=
UE
The Glads put on a finishing kick in the last two mont=
hs of
the season and turned a tight race into a 10-game rout. Their offense was the best in the =
league
as they ended up with the top three finishers in the batting race, topped by
Stan Musial’s sizzling .371.
Willie Mays wasn’t far behind and led the league with 128 runs
scored but others such as Del Ennis and Al Smith also played crucial
roles. On the mound they had =
two
great starters; Warren Spahn (the
Rossville Hor=
nets
– Final Record 79-75
A good September pulled the Hornets into second place,= one game ahead of the Fortress. T= he Hornets offense challenged the Gladiators and the pitching staff was comparable. They led the league with 221 homers including Ernie Banks’ league tying 40 and 36 = from Duke Snider. That should have= been good enough to get them a lot closer than 10 games but the pitching staff l= et them down. Frank Sullivan was fourth in league with a 3.21 ERA but lousy run support left his record at o= nly 11-17 while Billy Pierce reversed that at 17-11. The bullpen was a disaster, especi= ally the erstwhile ace closer Turk Lown who led the league with 11 blown saves to offset only 12 good saves. Fr= ank Lary at 13-11 was the only other double figure winner and the rest of the s= taff was distinctly unproductive.
The Forts were right there at the end of July but went= three games under .500 the last two months of the season and fell to third place, though only a game out of second. The manager used a lot of players; except for Johnny Temple no one e= lse appeared in more than 134 games and they did hit 197 homers but too many ca= me with the bases empty and they actually had a negative 37 run differential f= or the season. Several pitchers = such as Johnny Antonelli with 17 wins and Marv Grissom with 16 saves were decent= but a lot of the blame for the team failure has to rest on the shoulders of Pre= ston Gomez. He was penciled in as a potential 15-20 game winner and one of the anchors of the staff in the preseason but finished with a sorry 7-17 record and a bloated 5.52 ERA in 34 starts. Allowing a league lea= ding 41 homers didn’t help. =
The defending champs fell = off from 93 wins in 1956 to only 72 a year later.&n= bsp; What happened? The off= ense was OK but nothing to write home about as the Monarchs had a real dearth of players in the top ten of any significant offensive categories. Vic Wertz had a very good year with= a .309 BA, 31 homers and 92 RBI’s but he didn’t get a lot of help= and the team was plagued by a constantly changing cast of characters which made consistency hard to maintain. On the mound it was a similar story as they had only two pitchers with as many= as 13 wins and Roy Face with a league leading 17 saves was the only ray of lig= ht in the bullpen.
Yours truly picked the Ace=
s to win
a close pennant race but they finished in fifth place, 23 games out of
first. In retrospect part of =
the
problem might have been their home park,
The Holy Ones ended up 29 = games out of first but also 12 games ahead of the last place Hot Rods! The offense was pitiful as they ha= d an even worse (.307) OBA average than the Aces and were dead last in run scored with only 573 which was 272 less than the league-leading Gladiators. Gus Bell was a major disappointmen= t with only 4 homers in almost 500 at bats. The pitching staff on the other hand, led the American League with a sparkling 3.71 team ERA. The = burden was spread around as only one pitcher, Dick Donovan with 13 wins, posted do= uble figures in victories. Vern La= w had only a 9-12 record but led the league with an excellent 2.54 ERA.
Route 66 Hot Rods – Final Record 48-106
The Rods had very little h= itting and the worst pitching in the league so the fact that they lost 106 games should come as no surprise. T= hey had a league low 82 homers and 21 of them came from one player, Wally Moon.= Billy Gardner led the league with = 44 doubles and played an excellent second base but got very little help from anyone other than Moon. Early= Wynn pitched much better than his 10-21 record would indicate and was rewarded by being traded to a contender just after the World Series. Russ Kemmerer with a 1-12 record a= nd 7.24 ERA in 29 games (14 of them starts) was more representative of the Hot Rods’ staff.
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Despite being way off in predicting the American League winner, I was right on in the National as the Surfers were listed as a solid favorite and the race “could even be a Sur= fer runaway” which is exactly what happened as they posted 102 victories = and were seven games ahead of the second-place Bishops. MVP Candidate Mickey Mantle was se= cond in the batting race with a .377 average, first in OBA and walks plus he had= 29 homers and 105 RBI’s. L= arry Doby and Red Schoendist were other big contributors but the real secret to their success was pitching. T= he had a sensational 3.19 team ERA and four starters with 15 or more wins, led by = Jim Bunning and Willard Nixon with 18 each not to mention a great closer in Llo= yd Merritt who had 18 saves in 19 opportunities.
The Prelates had the best = offense in SPB II, bar none. The led = in team BA, OBA & SPC by wide margins and scored 1,028 runs which was 171 = more than anyone else! MVP candida= te Ted Williams led the league with an SPB II record .391average and despite playi= ng in only 126 games had 40 homers and 131 RBI’s. Williams had some great support fr= om Eddie Mathews (.332, 32,132), Jackie Jensen and Bob Cerv who hit a lofty .3= 67 in only 330 at bats. A rookie ph= enom by the name of Bob Hazle came up from the minors in mid season and was a “hurricane” who hit .466 in 131 at bats. However someone has to pitch and t= hat was a problem for the Salzburg crew as their team ERA of 5.01 was tied with= the woeful Hot Rods as the worst in baseball.&= nbsp; They did have the league’s only two 20-game winners in Mike Fornieles (23-5) and Dick Drott (20-8) but in both cases the pitchers enjoy= ed sensational run support. The = rest of the staff wasn’t much to write home about and the ace closer, Art = Ditmar had nine blown saves to go with his team leading 12 good saves.
The Cruisers were in effec= t the Bishops lite; a very good offense which scored 800 runs and a well below average pitching staff, though better than the Bishops. First sacker Moose Skowron was thi= rd in the batting race with a .351 average and threw in 17 homers for good measure while Frank Robinson (.322,19,99) had an All-Star quality year. Rookie Roger Maris had 17 homers i= n just 360 at bats and appears to have a great future. The pitching staff had six double = figure winners, but the leader with just 12 was Pedro Ramos. Gerry Staley with 14 saves (8 blow= n saves) was an adequate closer at best.
With just 128 homers, the =
offense
needed something more but it just wasn’t there as they ended the seas=
on
with only 697 runs scored. Ch=
arlie
Maxwell and Yogi Berra were solid contributors and got some help from a few
other hitters but it wasn’t enough to catapult them into the first
division. Rookie Jack Sanford
posted an 18-8 record and Mike “the Bear” Garcia was 15-9 but l=
ack
of support and lack of talent doomed the rest of the staff to mediocrity.
The Lakers entered the sea=
son
bereft of any big time talent but made the most of a bad situation as sever=
al
players, especially Bill Virdon and Bob Nieman, significantly overachieved =
based
on pre-season speculation. In=
fact
almost the entire roster overachieved at least in a modest sense and several
part timers did a great job.
However the cream rises to the top and when all you have is skim mil=
k,
it’s tough to rise very far so they still ended up in sixth place.
The