On the whole this has been a pretty ordinary year. There was the test ban treaty, of course, but we were due for a period of cooperation with the Russians. The economy has remained pretty stable, corporate profits are good, gold is flowing from Fort Knox as usual, the normal number of governments have been overthrown, and the Yankees won the American League pennant.

Last Sunday, however, we "found ourselves in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude," to use Winston Churchill's phrase. The Yankees lost the World Series. In four straight.

The effect this will have on American life can only be comprehended when one tries to imagine a United States without Mothers' Day, United States Steel, or the U.S. Marines. Never before have the Yankees lost in four games; it is as if the American Way of Life itself had struck out along with Mickey Mantle in the top of the ninth.

There was no warning this would happen, and there was no particularly good reason for it. Stock trading was normal the previous week, and scientists reported no major deviation in the movement of the celestial spheres.

Apologia

Perhaps the best explanation for the result was the obvious fact the Dodgers played like the Yankees who so frequently had defeated them in the past. Only once--on the next to last play when Tracewski dropped the toss from Wills--did the Dodgers play in character. And the Yankees resembled the Bums of Flatbush in many respects, even sounding like them when Mantle told reporters "I still think we have a better team--wait until next year."

Once the series began there were several indications that the Yankees' mantle of invincibility has been ill-sewn this year. Whitey Ford, The Indomitable, was quickly dominated, as were the fabled hitters in blue pin strips. The threatened storm in the ninth inning falled to produce the famed "five o'clock lightening." There was hardly even thunder.

Ralph Houk maintained the classic, nonchalant attitude required of Yankee managers in trouble, but his team on the second day displayed fielding everyone had expected of the Dodgers.

Upon arriving in Los Angeles Houk took the un-Yankeelike action of discussing the team's deficient performances in a long session with the players, and the Yankees followed this chat with a most unusual afternoon of frustration against a right-handed pitcher.

And in the final game the team was hardly recognizable, losing the game, the series and its legend in the field. Possible reasons for these strange affairs will be discussed tomorrow.