Play Ball!

The national pastime was once more its old half-heroic, half-comic self:

On opening day, the big-name veterans looked as good as they had been touted. The Indians' Bobby Feller and the Yankees' Spud Chandler pitched shutouts. The Tigers' Hank Greenberg and the Yankees' Joe Di Maggio hit home runs. The Red Sox's Ted Williams smacked the longest ball (440 ft.) seen in Washington's Griffith Stadium in 15 years.

While sportswriters (who had pegged him as "Lefty" Truman) held their breath, the President juggled the season's "first ball" in his right hand. At the last minute, he changed and lofted it out with his left (horseshoe-pitching) arm.

Commissioner "Happy" Chandler banned the Mexican jumping beans from organized ball for at least five years.

The American Baseball Guild, organized by a non-playing Harvard graduate, newest of a long series of attempts to unionize baseball, announced that it had "substantial membership" in ten big-league clubs. Most worried: such poorly paying managements as the Dodgers, the Senators and the Giants.

The Boston Braves took the Brooklyn Dodgers to the cleaners, 5-3, on opening day. Then they did the same thing for 500 fans whose clothes got smeared on the freshly painted grandstand.

Fans' eyebrows shot up at the Yankees' new publicity methods. Newspaper advertising for ball games is traditionally confined to austere announcements of time, place and contestants. Up came the Yankees with ads in the best soap-opera style. Sample: "Can Washington's famous 'knucklebal' pitchers stop what experts call the sluggingest team in the League? Or will Di Maggio, Keller & Co. make mincemeat of the Senators' pitching staff? Come out to the ball game and see!"

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