Spring Posers

> Who will wham the most home runs--Joe Di Maggio, Jimmy Foxx, Hank Greenberg or Ted Williams?

> Who will prove to be the No.1 rookie of the year--Giant Johnny Rucker, Yankee Marvin Breuer, Red Mike McCormick or Dodger Peewee Reese?

> Can begoggled little Dominic Di Maggio, purchased from the San Francisco Seals for $75,000, do for the Red Sox what Brother Joe has done for the Yankees?

> Will the Pirates go places under their new manager, fiery Frankie Frisch, who led the Cardinals to a world championship in 1934?

> Will the bat-mighty Cardinals or the pitch-mighty Reds win the National League pennant?

> Can the Red Sox or the Indians prevent the World Champion Yankees from winning the American League pennant for the fifth year in a row?

These problems momentarily supplanted the world's more serious perplexities for 200,000 U. S. citizens who last week crammed into eight major-league ball parks to salute the opening of the 1940 baseball season. In Washington's Griffith Park, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, surrounded by 30,000 equally earnest baseball fans, tossed the first ball, then settled back to watch the opening day's headliner: Washington Senators v. Boston Red Sox.

On the mound for Boston was diamond-wise Robert Moses ("Ole Mose") Grove, No. 1 Red Sox pitcher despite his 40 years. With masterful control and rare cunning, resorted to when the blaze died out of his famed fireball five years ago, Ole Mose confounded Washington batters. Up they came and down they went. By the eighth inning, no Senator had even got to first base on a walk. Then, after retiring 21 batters in a row--with a no-hit, no-run game almost in the palm of his glove--Grove faltered. One hit was chalked up against him, then another. Regaining control in time's nick, Ole Mose blasted his way out, wound up with a two-hit shutout (1-to-0)--as spectacular a game as any of the 287 he has won in 15 brilliant years of big-league baseball.

In baseball's record books Lefty Grove's latest victory might have gone down as the best performance of 1940's opening day, were it not for a dimple-chinned kid young enough to be his son: 21-year-old Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians. Like Grove, Feller is his team's No. 1 pitcher and was therefore assigned to start the Indians' opener, against the White Sox in Chicago's Comiskey Park.

Among his audience there was no President, but, in a box near home plate, were three spectators young Feller was just as anxious to please: his parents and his kid sister Marguerite, who had gone to Chicago from their farm in Van Meter, Iowa. Ma Feller in years gone by had often "cried her eyes out" because little Bob and his father used to spend so much time behind the barn playing ball. Last week, when the last White Sox batter had been put out, Ma Feller was in tears again, but for a different reason.

Young Bob, with the poise and savvy of a seasoned oldtimer, had succeeded in pitching a no-hit, no-run game (1-to-0)--a feat that had not been accomplished in a big-league park since 1938 and had never before in the history of major-league baseball been accomplished on an opening day.

That night, wherever baseball fans gathered, all pre-season posers were eclipsed by one absorbing question: Will Bob Feller turn out to be the greatest pitcher of all time?

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