[Ads-l] magic number

[James Landau]

It's that time of year again, and we keep hearing about the "magic number" for division-leading teams (as of last night, the magic number for the Philadelphia Phillies was 9, that is, any combination of 9 wins by the Phillies and losses by the New Yorik Mets gives the Phillies the National League East pennant.
Here's the earliest usage I could find on Google Books:
American Magazine  Volumes 142-143  page 39  year 1946
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ilt5OP_f3xsC&q="magic+number%27%2Bbaseball&dq="magic+number%27%2Bbaseball&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2uMuNp8OIAxU8M1kFHam_KiA4FBDoAXoECAUQAg

"The next year the magic number of 21 tilted the scales in the championship race.  The Chicago Cubs won 21 straight in the September straightaway.  The last link in that chain was represented by a victory over the Cardinals in St. Louis, and it clinched the pennant for the Cubs"
note bene:  this was a snippet view, I could not find anything confirming the date of the issue (Google Books said 1946) and the wording was not conclusive that the text matched the definition I gave above of "magic number".
Does anyone have a better citation?
James Landau
jjjrlandau at netscape.com

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