Brooks. But now he was a star in his own right, for he was the third leading batter in the senior circuit.

But it only seemed that he was a real star. In the early stage of the 1946 season Brooklyn let go of him. What happened after that is fairly well known. Rosen showed that he could play major league ball. This is what he did:

In July, in an ordinary game against the Chicago Cubs, who beat the Giants regularly in 1946, Rosen came to bat as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning of a 2-2 tie game. The Giants had filled the bases with two out. Goody hit the first pitch into right field and that was the ball game.

A month later in Cincinnati, Rosen, who seldom hit homers, drove a prodigious wallop over the right-field wall to win for his team, 4-3.

That's how it went most of the season. He played in over 100 games and batted .281. He probably would have batted .300, had he not sustained that injury in Pittsburgh.

Here is Goody's version of it, and it indicates the pressure under which a major leaguer sometimes has to play.

"I remember," Rosen declared, "that after six weeks on the sidelines, Mel Ott came to me and asked me when I would be ready to get back into the lineup. I told him I could hardly comb my hair, the shoulder was that stiff, and he said: 'Well, the front office is beginning to holler. You'd better get back anyway.' "

Rosen wasn't the same player the rest of the year, although it is apparent that when Brooklyn traded him to the Giants, the Dodgers lost the 1946 flag. Remember, the season ended with Brooklyn and St. Louis in a deadlock and a playoff was necessary to determine the winner. And Rosen, by himself, won three games from the Dodgers while wearing a Giant uniform.