The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-04-18
Braues Find Company In Cellar After First Day of Ball Playing

NEW YORK, April 17.-Roosting in the grandstands of four National league baseball yards, the early sea son patronage of the older bis loop supervised a proper getaway att Tuesdays opening games and thrilled to the extra. added tableau of stout elderly stockholders marching from the platter to the flagpole and back.
 The actual baseball developments are the real porterhouse of any days diet in baseball. be it opening day or soggy Monday in Boston way deep in September. But on opening day there is always fetching cere- monial parsley enacted by the stock holders and other noncombatants IS a garnishment for the principal dish
 In BostCn the Giants began their progress toward another. third con- secutlve world series by thrusting Christy Mathewsons rheumatic Braves right down into the cellar of the league, the score being to |. The gloomy old excavation at the bottom of the list is the cid home of the Boston team, which leased those premises early last season and de- tended them until the end against the dispossessed Philltes. The Braves are complaining, however, that tue basement is overcrowded, as they tions for the first night, ct least. to the St. tuis Cardinals and the Chi cago Cubs. These teams also lost their opening games and therefore share with the Braves the l!feless official ranking of: Games played l, won O. lost 1, Pct. 900
 Cards Lost Hard One.
 The Cardinals lost an Thinning show to the Reds in Cincinnati by the score of to and the Cubs postponed whatever winning they ex- pect to dc this year, when they fum- bled their first chance in their own, expanded ball park in Chicago. the victors being the Pirates and the score also 3 to 2.
 In Brooklyn the Dodgers and the Phillies of Art Fletcher played IA in nings to a to 5 score and darkness at last dispersed them. Dutch Reu- ther, the Dodgers southpaw, who won 21 games last year including seven from these identical Phillies. went all the way fer the Dodgers, allowing only nine hits Reuther would have started this season in the way that a season should start. but for four errors which mutilated his best inventions. Reuther's contract requires him to win 20 gall games in order to merit the tenth thousand of his $10000 salary. In order to make sure that Reuther wouldn't get that thousand the Dodgers management surrounded him with this infield which might be the worst in. the world if it really tried and which may be that right now, without half trying.
 Early Season Clients.
 But the early season clients are not the steady, all-weather-tread GUS toners who bulge with joy. glover with hate sing. shout or sob in hot sympathy with the ball clubs in the long stretch between warm weather and the first painting of the sunac. They are an insincere crowd who seize upon the aesthetic spectacle of the marching magnates on opening day as symbol from nature that it's all right now to take off the heavies. They may come back from time to time during the season but only 1T there is a promised appearance of Judge Landis himself. in person. with the common people hat and the congressional unkemptness of his sculputed white hair.
 The ceremonies at Boston were five starred, featuring the judge with positively the original hat and hair: Christy Matthewson. turned chusetts; Mayor Curley of Boston, and Emil Fuchs, pre- sadent of the cor poration which owns the Braves. These compelants were sufficient to bring out 15000 early blooming fans, which was more fans than the Braves and Red Sox combined would draw in a whole week in their native premises last summer.
 O O O
 Charlie Missed It.
 At Ebbets field in Brooklyn, Uncle Charley Ebbets was reported to be i'll in bed and so the stockholders had to march to the flag pole with out him. Therefore, the exercises preceding the opening here was not inspiring. The usual floral horse shoe also was acutely missed having been carelessly misplaced somewhere in the storage loft during the winter. There was no such oversight in Gin cinnati, where wreaths of chaste eidelweiSs blooms were presented to Pat Moran bv Garry Herman