DOUBLEDAY'S DREAM

Today you can forget for a moment the Spanish war, the Chinese war, the Government spending-lending plan. Roosevelt, Hitler, Mussolini, Daladier are today just ordinary persons. The Olympic games, the Grand National, the Wimbledon and Davis Cup tennis, Rose Bowl football; they are just ordinary sports events. For today is the start of the world's biggest sports spectacle the opening of the major league baseball season, with sixteen teams ready to start a 154-game grind down to the home stretch and the World Series.

It is more than just the opening of the baseball season. One hundred years ago this spring a man named Abner Doubleday laid out the first baseball diamond on the Common at Cooperstown, New York. In the century since Doubleday baseball has risen to a position second to none in the sporting world. Every American child has smacked spheroid with hickory from the time he able to coordinate. Even the French and German papers run the American major league scores each day. Babe Ruth and Dizzy Dean are probably as well known as anybody in America, both here and abroad.

President Roosevelt cannot be completely forgotten today, however, for he will toss out the ball which will officially signify the opening, as the Washington Senators square off with the Philadelphia Athletics in Griffith Stadium. Here in Boston Thomas Yawkey's million dollar Red Sox will tangle with the World Champion New York Yankees. For two straight years both New York nines have wound up facing each other in the World Series. For the good of baseball everyone is hoping that the 1938 season may see a change. In the American League the return of the fabulous "Schoolboy" Rowe may put Detroit on top, or Cleveland's lightning thrower Bob Feller may have enough to give his team the verdict. With the news that the one and only Dizzy Dean has been traded to the already powerful Chicago Cubs, it looks as if the New York Giants were through. In any case, the major league race marks the acme of sportdom, and the eyes of the world are focused.