For, though there are over 500 able individuals enrolled in the two leagues, there is actually only a handful for whom the grand army of snobbish rooters has eyes, for whom hats are thrown, bottles broken, hosannas raised.

--TIME, March 30, 1925

"THUS TIME'S first baseball cover described the elite group of athletes from which it picked George Harold Sisler, at the start of a season when weakened eyes threatened his unprecedented career. Happily, First Baseman-Manager Sisler got things into focus: he hit .345, made TIME and the St. Louis Browns look good (though he was well below his best season: .420 in 1922). Since then, TIME has run up a good country batting average raising timely monuments for baseball's heroes. Joe DiMaggio was on the cover at the start of his major-league career; Cleveland's Bob Feller had almost all his fireballing years in front of him. Jackie Robinson, Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle--and many others -- were all caught when they were going good.

Now and then, TIME took a called third strike--or did not get to the plate at all. Somehow Babe Ruth never made the cover. Brooklyn Manager Leo Durocher was suspended for a year the week his cover hit the stands.

This week TIME is swinging at a fat pitch letter-high. As the season starts, there is no question that sport's big story is a front-office operator, who changed baseball into the national pastime and brought the major leagues to the West Coast, See SPORT, Walter in Wonderland.

TIME's story about corruption in President Garcia's Philippine administration caused an uproar in Manila last week. Pro-government newspapers denounced it in banner headlines; a copy of the issue was burned on the floor of Congress. Most denunciations centered not on the story's facts but on the propriety of printing them. Challenging anybody to deny the facts, Manila Times Columnist Alejandro Roces wrote: "Unless we take a cold sober look at ourselves, we can expect only ruin and even more critical remarks."

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