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Welcome to Leo DeRosier.
Chimney Sweep, America's number one such destroyer, presents the famous fiery manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers,
Leo DeRosier, and a sparkling new 15 minute program, your sports question box.
You send in the questions, any question on any sport or game, and Leo answers it.
Every question used, Chimney Sweep, such destroyer, pays the sender $5,
and the question considered by Leo, the most interesting, nets the sender $50, compliments of Chimney Sweep.
Send in your question tonight. All questions become the property of Chimney Sweep.
And here's the masterminding manager of those dashing, slam bang Brooklyn Dodgers, Leo DeRosier.
Hi ya folks, hello to all of you. Boy, what a wonderful world. It's sure great to be alive.
Leo, this from you? Why I thought this is...
I know what you thought, Frank. I know what everybody thought, but this is the new DeRosier.
Everybody's friend, not mad at anyone. Yes, sir, Frank, you're looking at gentlemen Leo DeRosier.
This I gotta hear.
You and me both, Frank.
Well, just keep your ears open, both of you.
Oh, that's more like it.
Yeah, now we can start the show. The first question comes from H.A. Brown of Cleveland, Ohio.
Mr. Brown was an umpire.
Never heard of him, and if I never heard of him, he's no umpire. You're so touchy, Leo.
I'm sure DeRosier can, remember? It seems, Leo, that Mr. Brown acted as umpire during a schoolboy game one day last summer.
He wants some advice from you.
This must be the end of the world, an umpire asking me for advice.
In any case, here's Mr. Brown's letter.
One day last summer, I was acting as umpire of a baseball game between two local Chews Up Schoolboy teams.
The Die Hards and the Murderers.
What names those kids can dream up?
Right. A member of the Die Hards hit a home run, but in circling the bases, he failed to touch second.
After he completed the circuit, I ruled him out for this omission. The captain of the Die Hards was mad as a hornet.
That's not very mad in Brooklyn.
The captain said I had no right to call the missed base to the scorer's attention unless some member of the opposing team, that is the Murderers, had first called it to my attention.
What he actually said was, I should have kept my big mouth shut.
Ah, there's a kid after my own heart. Find out his name, Frank, and tell him there's a job waiting for him on the Dodgers when he grows up.
I suppose you'd use him as a pinched beef, are you, Leo?
Well, how else, Frank? I can just hear the announcer saying, so-and-so now screaming for derosier.
Yes, sir, I can use that lad.
And now, how about a ruling on the play?
Well, the captain of the Die Hards was absolutely right. The umpires should have kept quiet.
In a baseball game, every player is supposed to be wide awake and on his toes every minute of the game.
If they're not interested enough in their opponent's mistakes to catch them, then like the captain of the Die Hards said, the umpire should have kept his big mouth shut.
And the run should have counted. $5 for Mr. Brown.
Mary Wallace of Oceanside, California wants you to tell her the distance of the longest swim on record.
And jumping right out of the pool with the answer, Frank, here it is.
Back in February 1935, Pedro Candisti swam 281 miles between Santa Fe and Surrey in the waters of the Pareña River in Argentine South America.
You sound like you were right there, Leo.
Me? I'm rowing the boat for the kid and handing him out hot coffee and axle grease. Next?
Well, now if the lift will give me a chance, I've got a few facts and figures that will prove interesting to every homemaker.
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Now, back to Leo D'Rosier and Frank Chase.
K.L. Chavizi of New York City wants to know the name of the pitcher who fanned the mighty Casey in the poem, Casey at the Bat.
Well, that's something I always wanted to know myself. I could have used that guy plenty last season.
The pitcher's name, Leo. We'll get the personal troubles later.
Well, I'm trying to tell you the guy didn't have a name.
Oh, come, come, Leo. Everybody has a name.
Well, this guy didn't, see? Ernest there who wrote the poem never gave him a name. He's baseball's unknown man.
Well, if you can't give Mr. Chavizi the pitcher's name, maybe you'd like to recite the poem for him.
Oh, sure. It only runs 13 stanzas and we got all the time in the world.
Well, how about the finale then, the last stanza?
Oh, boy. Well, Mr. Ricky hears this. D'Rosier reciting poetry. But here goes anything to please the customer.
Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.
We now present Mr. Leo D'Rosier, manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team,
and a heartwarming rendition of the final stanza of that greatest of all baseball poems, Casey at the Bat.
Mr. D'Rosier.
Oh, somewhere in this favorite land, the sun is shining bright.
The band is playing somewhere and somewhere hearts are light, and somewhere men are laughing,
and somewhere children shout, but there is no joy in Mudville. Mighty Casey had struck out.
Beautiful, Leo. Beautiful. Didn't you think so, Ken?
Superb, Frank. Superb. Don't remember when I've heard anything so moving.
Very funny. Next question right now.
From Mort Blumberg of Washington, what's the highest speed ever made in an automobile?
Well, of course, since Mr. Ricky gave the boys those cars at the end of the season,
there may have been a whole lot of new records made.
But the last official automobile time was set by John R. Cobb on August 23, 1939,
in two one-mile runs over the Bonville Salt Flats, Cobb averaged 369.7 miles per hour.
Say, that ain't coasting.
$5 to Mr. Blumberg.
And that ain't hay.
Now, Leo, I have a man from Havana.
You sound like Dr. I. Q.
That's who I meant to sound like. Glad you guessed it.
Well, wonderful to be on the mic with a guy who thinks he's a mimic.
Okay, what does the Havana gent want to know?
On what sport do Americans spend the most money each year?
The answer is fishing.
Pre-war figures show that Americans spent about $1 billion, $200 million a year on their rods and reels.
Hunting was in second place with an annual outlay of some $650 million.
Golfers laid another $600 million on the line for the love of that game.
Motor boarding was fourth with about the same amount as in golf.
And bowling was fifth with the cash registers ringing up $450 million.
And what about the so-called attendance sports, football, baseball, basketball games, crack meets, that sort of thing?
Way down the line, Frank.
Sports fans spent only a measly $260 million on paid admissions to sporting contests,
according to the most recent figures, just chicken feet.
Yeah, does Mr. Ricky know that you consider $260 million chicken feet?
He never asked me, so I never told him.
And don't you?
You're right there with all the answers today, Leo.
Well, you know I'm beginning to believe what those umps say about me.
Yeah, what's that?
Derosha knows the answer to everything.
Oh, you do, eh?
Well, grab hold of this one.
Each week, sports fans, we dream up one question that the lip hasn't heard about in advance.
Today, the question is on a subject dear to Leo's heart, baseball.
Here it is.
Well, far away, Frank.
Here's the situation, Leo.
The first batter up hits a foul fly which the catcher catches.
The batter still goes to first base.
Well, the only thing I can see there is that the catcher in the field with the hitter,
in other words, tipped his back.
That's right.
Now, the next hitter up hits a long fly to center field, which is also caught.
The man on first scores.
How do you explain it?
Hits a long fly to center field, which is caught.
Right.
The center fielder held the ball.
Right?
There was no wild throws after he threw it back into the infield.
No, nothing of that.
I give up.
The center fielder sees that the ball is going over his head.
He leaps for the ball and in so doing loses his glove, which hits and stops the ball in flight.
The ball drops down into his bare hands.
A piece of equipment interfering with the ball in flight carries with it a free base penalty.
Honey, in 20 years I've been in this game, I've never seen it happen.
I got guys in the Brooklyn Club can't even catch it with a glove on.
You got them catching it with it off.
Okay, Leo, let's get back to the customers and their question.
Where'd you dig the last one up?
Oh, I've become something of a student of the game these last few weeks.
Well, he's up on your homework, or I won't be able to look at my own players next year.
I'll have one of those surprise items for you every week, Leo.
Just to let the customers see how you think on your feet.
My pal.
Now back to the show and a question from R.M. Bell of Las Vegas, Nevada.
It's about cards.
Why doesn't he write the St. Louis papers?
His question has to do with playing cards, not the Cardinals' baseball club.
Mr. Bell wants you to tell him who is supposed to be represented by the four kings in a deck of ordinary playing cards.
Why, this is a royal cinch.
The four kings are supposed to be four real kings of olden times.
They're David, Alexander, Caesar, and Charlemagne.
Next.
And now we come to the most interesting question of the week.
In baseball, what is the record for consecutive scoreless innings?
Just a minute, Leo. Before you answer that, I've got a word or two to say to the fans.
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And now for the most interesting question of this week.
The most interesting question of this week comes from, and its $50 award goes to,
Mrs. T.S. Atkins of Westerly, Rhode Island.
Mrs. Atkins writes, in reading about that 19-inning scoreless tie between the dodges and the red.
Well, I guess I'll never hear the end of that one.
And if Mrs. Atkins wants to know why we didn't win, tell her we're only human.
Well, that isn't what she wants to know.
She says newspaper reports of the game refer to it as the longest scoreless tie on record,
but then went on to point out that more scoreless innings had been played in a game between the pirates and the Braves back in 1918.
Well, that's right. It was on August 1, 1918, that the pirates beat the Braves in the 21st inning when they scored two runs.
The only scoring of the game.
So that pirate-brave game actually ran 20 scoreless innings before a run crossed the plate.
Mrs. Atkins knows all that, Ken. Here's what she wants to know.
Was the record for scoreless innings made in that pirate-brave duel?
No, it wasn't. And a funny thing is none of the sports writers mentioned the real record game.
Back in 1893, Washington and St. Louis played, and here's what happened.
On August 27th, the teams went 12 innings without a run.
Play was suspended on account of darkness.
When the game was resumed on August 28th, another 14 innings passed with nothing but gooseache.
Yeah, but wasn't the same game.
I wasn't there, Frank, but the official scores marked it down as a single game.
It lasted 27 innings, and the first 26 of them were scoreless.
Incidentally, Washington won the game in the 27th inning.
By what score?
1 to nothing, I hope. What do you mean, you hope?
What difference does it make? Washington won, and that's enough for any ball clip to know.
Let's get on to the next question.
First off, congratulations and a check for $50 to Mrs. Atkins.
And that's all for today, Leo. I want a few seconds to tell the fans how to send in their questions.
You know, folks, this is your sports question box.
You send in the questions, any question, on any sport or any card game.
For every question used on any program, we'll mail the sender $5.
But that's not all. If your question is judged most interesting of the week,
we'll mail you a check for $50.
Just write your question on a plain piece of paper, and be sure to include your name and address.
Mail to Leo DeRosier, American Broadcasting Company, New York City, 20, New York.
This is Leo DeRosier saying, see you next week, same time, same station.
One hour'll be back for Chimney's Week with more answers to your sports question box.
Meantime, remember, in life, as in baseball, a sacrifice never hurts your batting average.
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Your sports question box is the original production of Frank Chase.