Stan Hochman: Is it in the cards for Phillies to win NL third year in a row?

'I'VE LOOKED the field over and lo and behold, they're either too young or too old."

The St. Louis Cardinals got to the World Series in 1942, '43 and '44, the last National League team to make it to the Fall Classic 3 years in a row. The Phillies want to match that record this year, eclipse it next year, bury it the year after that.

You want to compare the two teams? You can't! It was a different game in the early '40s. A totally different game. It was whiter than snow. Jackie Robinson was in the U.S. Army, facing court martial for refusing to sit in the back of a bus.

Eight teams to a league. Win and you're in. No division playoffs, no League Championship Series. No free agency. No team west of the Mississippi, no team south of Washington, D.C.

New York had three teams, Boston had two, Chicago had two, Philly had two (both lousy), St. Louis had two, sharing the same ballpark. Which meant the Cardinals and Browns were never home at the same time, which made it possible for the managers, Billy Southworth and Luke Sewell, to share the same apartment.

"They're either too gray or too grassy green; the pickings are poor and the crop is lean."

Wartime makes strange bedfellows. Makes for strange rosters, too, what with a whole squadron of big leaguers called to military service.

The Cardinals had an edge over the rest of baseball, because Branch Rickey had built the game's best farm system, even if he bent the rules to do it. Got caught in 1938, so commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis emanicipated approximately 100 St. Louis minor leaguers.

Bare? The cupboard was jammed with pitching prospects. In 1942, they included Harry Brecheen, George Munger, Ted Wilks, Preacher Roe and Al Brazle.

The Cards shoved Rickey out the door after the '42 season. The Dodgers hired him, and he signed Robinson in '47, changing the game forever.

How deep were the Cardinals? They trailed the Dodgers by 9 1/2 games on Aug. 15 in '42, then won 30 of their next 36. Their ace, pitcher Mort Cooper, was the MVP that year. Won 22 games, completed 22 games. Cardinal pitchers had 70 complete games, a combined ERA of 2.55.

A rookie named Stan Musial hit .315. When the Cardinals lost two-thirds of their outfield to the military (Enos Slaughter and Terry Moore), they still managed to win 105 games the next year, with Musial winning the first of seven batting titles, hitting .357.

Musial was married, had a son, supported his dad, a victim of black lung disease, the brutal residue of laboring in the coal mines near Donora, Pa. Which partially explains why Musial wasn't drafted until 1945. Draft-board rules varied from region to region, another explanation.

Third baseman Whitey Kurowski, born in Reading, was a victim of osteomyelitis, a bone inflammation, as a kid, and classified 4F. Shortstop Marty Marion was exempt because one leg was shorter than the other. Nothing stopped the Cardinal express. Howie Pollett was drafted after the '43 season, so Wilks made his big-league debut in '44 at age 28 and won 17 games. Lose Brazle in '44 and Max Lanier wins 17.

Musial was the MVP in '43. Marion won it in '44, when the Cardinals won 105 games again, with 89 complete games and 26 shutouts.

So, how did they do in those three runs at the World Series? Beat the Yankees that first year, with the youngest team in baseball. Lost the opener, then swept the next four games. World Series share was $5,573.78 plus a war bond worth another $825.

Faced the Yankees again the next year. The guys in pinstripes won their 10th championship, four games to one.

Wound up beating the ordinarily woeful Browns in a streetcar series in '44. Sewell and Southworth did not have to coin-flip or arm-wrestle for the use of the apartment they had shared. Another tenant in the building offered his place to the Southworth family.

The Cardinals got to the World Series again in '46 when Musial returned from the war. Didn't get back again until 1964, when they snuck in the back door while a certain eastern team asphyxiated down the stretch.

Beat the Yankees again, with Bob Gibson starting Games 2, 5 and 7.

"I had a commitment to his heart," manager Johnny Keane said. Gene Mauch would have matched him quote for quote, but he never got the chance.

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