Saturday 15 March 2008

Monday, May 4, 1953

W L PCT GB
Lewiston .... 8 1 .864 —
Victoria .... 7 4 .636 2
Vancouver ... 6 4 .600 2½
Yakima ...... 6 5 .554 3
Tri-City .... 5 5 .500 3½
Spokane ..... 5 5 .500 3½
Wenatchee ... 4 6 .400 4½
Salem ....... 2 5 .286 5
Edmonton .... 2 5 .286 5
Calgary ..... 2 7 .222 6


VANCOUVER, May 4 — The Vancouver Capilanos racked up seven hits and five runs in the first three innings against the Tri-City Braves Monday night and coasted to a 5-1 win in their Western International Baseball League series opener.
Southpaw Jim Hedgecock, who gave way to Carl Gunnarson in the seventh, was credited with his first win of the season for the Caps. He has lost one.
The Braves' lone tally was scored in the sixth inning by Manager Edo Vanni and was unearned.
Vanni singled to center, advanced to second on Hedgecock's wild throw to first on a pickoff attempt, and scored on a single by left-fielder Jack Warren.
Vanni and Warren picked up five of the losers' six hits. Vanni had two for four and Warren cracked out three singles in three official trips to the plate.
The Capilanos scored one run in the first inning and two in both the second and third on seven hits, two walks and two wild pitches.
Tri-City .............. 000 001 000—1 6 1
Vancouver ......... 122 000 00x—5 12 1
Piedmonte and Pesut; Hedgecock, Gunnarson (7) and Lundberg.

VICTORIA, B.C., May 4—The Victoria Tyees staged an uphill struggle Monday night to edge the Salem Senators 5-4 in a ten-inning game which opened a three-game Western International Baseball League series.
The win was the third straight for the defending champions and kept them in second place.
The Tyees trailed 4-1 going into the eighth inning as Salem hurler Wayne Rick kept them, at bay. They came through-with one run in that frame and then sent the game into extra innings by scoring two runs in the ninth without a base hit.
Victoria pushed across the winner in the bottom of the tenth on a squeeze bunt by Zeb Walker.
The game was highlighted by seven double plays — four by Victoria, Gene Tanselli of the Senators set a league record by handling 18 infield chances.
Victoria Business manager Reg Patterson announced before the game that righthander Marlon Hill, with Salt Lake City last season, would not be reporting to the Tyees as previously announced. He has truned to his Tennessee home.
Salem ......... 000 400 000 0—4 11 5
Victoria ...... 000 100 012 1—5 9 1
Rick, Best (9) and Nelson; Prior, Walker (10) and Martin, Brusa (10).

Only games scheduled

today’s fanfare
The New Capilanos Come to Town
By Eric Whitehead
[Vancouver Province, May 5, 1953]
Already the comeback team of 1953: Harvey Storey’s Capilanos.
The team that got away to that nightmare start a fortnight ago is not the club we saw out at the stadium last night. The lads have shucked off the memory of that nightmare debut and emerged with a beautiful New Look. Last night’s club would win in the Coast League.
From whence came the revolution? From no-whence, Mildred . . . from no-whence. The truth of the matter—as we tried to explain the other week to our horrified neighbors—is that in the opening series, Storey & Co. merely caught Lady Luck in a vile mood. The old gal was simply lashing out with her clogs at the nearest innocent bystander, who happened to be the Capilanos.
The club’s swift climb to a smart six-four win record after dropping their first three games is due to a revision to the form fondly envisioned by the Loyal and Ancient Spring-Training Optimists Society, President, Honest Clancy Loranger.
Gordie Hernandez, Frank “Moose” Mascaro, Storey and Jim Wert are now whacking the ball. Rookie outfielder Nick Castas has come along like a hurricane both at bat and afield, and now big Don Lundberg is getting the range. At short, pepper-pot Chuck Davis has shaken off the plagues and bids to be the best short-catcher in the circuit.
And Up Pops MacKay
And don’t look now, but GM Soriano, a man who just a week or so ago, was contemplating hari-kiri, may have himself that happiest of all acquisitions: a Local Boy Who Makes Good in a Big Way.
Dewey is quite aware of the last such gentlemen of distinction to favor the box office, a lean laddie named Sandy Robertson, a local chucker who, not only ran up a record string of 12 straight wins but also attracted the natives in droves.
In that year of our Robertson, 1951, GM Bob Brown rang up an all-time Vancouver record total of more than 170,000 admissions for the season.
Shooting to beat that record, Soriano needs just such a ringer. He might have him in the person of a lanky King Ed old-grad name of Rod MacKay.
Garriott Was Swinging
First good look we had at MacKay was down in a three-quarter horse town whose name we refuse to remember, down in the California Grape-fruit League early last month. The lads were breaking pasture-land with the Victoria Tyees, under the guise of a scheduled springs-training game. It was so cold that night the four natives who huddled inexplicably in the grandstand snapped clean in two when they got up to take the seventh-inning stretch.
The Caps had veteran Pete Hernandez coasting along out on the mound for the first five, then Storey tossed in this new MacKay kid for a first look.
About two pitches later, we snapped up out of the chill gloom for a quick double-take. The lanky kid, cool as a cucumber and with a night to match, whipped in a crisply-breaking curve and a pretty fair hitting gent name of Don Pries went down.
Next up and next down with a bat full of ozone was the Victoria skipper, Cece Garriot. A minute later, the kid snapped a fast one past big Chuck Abernathy.
A String of O’s
It wasn’t so much what he was doing, but how he was doing it. Sharp, cool, efficient, as if he had been doing it all his life.
When the kid ambled off after four hitless innings, we scurried straight for Soriano and suggested: “Kid looks like he’s really got it, huh?”
“Maybe,” said Soriano, ever cautious of flowers that bloom in the spring tra-la, “Maybe.”
Suffice it to say that since then MacKay has pitched a total of 21 innings (14 in league play, including his Sunday 6-0 shutout) and has yet to be scored on.
We don’t want to put the hex on the kid by this interesting revelation, but there it is. If he hasn’t really got it, he’s certainly had it for a while anyway. And a lot of folks, including yours truly, will turn out to see how Soriano’s Ringer performs when Storey shakes him loose later this week out at the stadium. Father-in-law Johnny Nestman, a pretty smart third-baseman in his day, might come to be real proud of the boy. Not to mention Soriano.

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