The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-08-23
SURGE OF RED BIRDS SOUNDS
 REAL WARNING
Cincinnati Realizes Any= thing Can Happen Next
 Month
By BILL BRANDT

the corner of the baseball calendar, it's traditionally the season for Ma tional league fans to rub their eyes, take hitch in their belts, and get themselves set for series of shocks and thrills in the pennant race clutch. The 1889 golden n-rod gold rush is sure to be one of the f1ercest and most thrillful in all the long history of baseball's senior major league.
 Cincinnatis hosts all along the Ohio Valley counted the Royal Reds as runaway champions when July turned into August. But going around the bend out of August there's tremendous trepidation up and down Zealand. The summer surge of the St. Louis Cardinals sounded a siren warning. Today life is real and earnest throughout the parent circuits first division.
 Stirring Story
 There's stirring September story to be written before the National league flag knows exactly what ball. parks masthead it will decorate come spring, 1940. Lopsters fired a statistical broadside into the midriff of Cincy confidence by pointing out that only once in the last years of National league strife did the September 1 pacemaker stave off all contenders in the stretch drive and and the, galfalon. That was 1886, when Bill Terry's Giants held a 31a jump on the runner-up Chicago Cubs at September's dawn and stood 5 games ahead of the second-place Cardinals at the seasons sunset.
 Four out of five went the other way. First place September 1 means less than nothing, the experts pre- dicted. The numercal evidence in modern National league annals proves that the best place for a potential pennant-wining club to perch on the first of September is anywhere from one to ' games be- hind the leader, and anywhere from 2nd to 4th in the club standing.
 Four years out of the last 5, that's the way it worked. The 1887 cham pion Giants were in second place September 1, one game back of the Cubs. The Cardinals, 1884 champs of their league and conquerrors of the Detroit Tigers for the world championship, were 51a games from the top September 1, tied for second place with the Cubs and trailing the Giants by what looked like an unerasable deficit.
 The Cubs, whose 21-straight Sep tember winning streak captured the 1885 pennant, were in 3rd place Sep .tember 1, though 21s games back of the pacemaking Cardinals with the Giants sandwiched between.
 Furthest back of all were last years Cubs, all of 2 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates when the sunflower month barged around the bend and as deep in the P. c. table as fourth place. Giants and Reds were up ahead of the Cubs when September-Drive season started, but by the end of the drive the Bruins were in front by the margain of doubleheader, 2 games.
 So it's getting worse, the out-of- town figures told Redland fans. The very worst place to be at the start of a National league September Drive is first place. Four out of 5 times in the past years the payoff went to some club other than the September pacemaker.
 Stop Too Soon
 But sometimes figurers stop too soon. Royal Red rooters have pried a bit further back into the annals, with the result that September 1 first place regained its full measure of importance. Sitting through the 5 years prior to 1884, the score was exactly the other way.
 From 1929 to 1883 inclusive, of the 5 September-morn pacemak- CTS withstood all opposition and landed the ultimate pennant trophy. Only in 1889 was the dope upset. That year the Red Birds of old St. Louis trailed the league-leading Cubs by 6h games when the books were added up on the night of Au- gust 31.
 The Cards were in 4th place at September's dawn, with the Giants Dodgers feud tucked in between first place and 4th. Out of this com- plicated first division situation the Missouri flock eventually emerged as pennant-winners.
 That was real Drive style, but the next year on September 1 the Cardinlas were g games ahead of the second-place Giants and went on to win the pennant and world championship. That was more in the style of those times, as for instance, 1929, when the pennant-winning Cubs had been 111A games ahead of the Pirates on September 1; or 1892 when Cholly Grimms champion | Cubs held 71s game lead over the Pirates at September's first rays of light; or 1883, when the Giants, on their way to the flag. could look back on September l at the second- place Bostons games to the rear.
 So if you look back only years, being in first place September is bad news, but if you go back 10 years. you see that actly half of the time first place on September 1 meant the pennant; the other half it meant no pennant.
 The combined figuring over a To- year period adds up to the sage con- clusion which every well1versed Ma tional league fan knew all the time without figuring. namely, in the Ma tional league in September just about anything can happen. And usually does.