Sport: Boston Bravery

The unhappy condition of the Boston Braves baseball team is a matter of long standing. For a decade its players have felt that they enjoyed a banner year when they finished in the first division. Last year the club’s treasury showed a serious deficit. This year, the situation grew acute. First, the Braves’ President Judge Emil Fuchs proposed to run dog races at Braves Field as a side attraction. The National League indignantly refused to allow it. Then Colonel Jacob Ruppert of the New York Yankees made Judge Fuchs a present of Babe Ruth. Dazzled momentarily by what he mistook for good fortune, Judge Fuchs soon learned that shrewd Colonel Ruppert had merely passed on his most perplexing problem. In June Ruth left the Braves in a rage because he had been refused permission to attend a party on board the Normandie. Last fortnight President Fuchs handed over his stock to Vice President Charles Francis Adams* and resigned. It looked as if the Braves would soon have to enjoy a miracle or go out of business. Last week the miracle occurred. It was a prospective buyer whose name was George Preston Marshall.

What Mr. Marshall proposed was not an outright purchase of the team, but Vice President Adams could scarcely have been sanguine enough to hope for anything as comfortable as that. It was an arrangement whereby stock in the club would be transferred to a management corporation headed by Mr. Marshall who offered to put up $300,000. In the next five years, the new company would take over all the old stock, in exchange for either cash or new stock. Whether or not the plan goes through depends largely on the Braves’ creditors, of whom the biggest is First National Bank of Boston. Last week they seemed very likely to accept it.

The first characteristic of anyone who would even make an offer for such an organization as the Boston Braves is genuine, if harmless, eccentricity. In this respect, Buyer Marshall is eminently qualified. He is a Washington. D. C. arriviste whose ebullient social career is based upon his chain of 50 blue-&-gold Palace Laundries, each plastered with the slogan “Long Live Linen.” Laundryman Marshall sleeps until noon every day, takes a nap before dinner, stays up most of the night, has a dirt phobia, orders coffee before soup when dining out, arrives late for all engagements, laughs in a deafening high-pitched guffaw. The oddities of Mr. Marshall’s behavior do not argue lack of acumen. Onetime partner in a small-time vaudeville act with Cinema Director Monta Bell, he built up his string of laundries, conveniently situated in a city where the percentage of stiff shirts and white ties is abnormally high, from a single run-down mangling establishment which he inherited from his father. Convivial, impudent and gregarious, George Marshall is entertained at being accused of social climbing. Once he sent his friends a Christmas card which showed him scrambling up a ladder with a laundry bag on his shoulder. His friendship with Son George Hearst led to his becoming the 17th publisher to be hired by Father Hearst for his Washington Times. In a year, he got himself fired for being underfoot in the city rooms.

Last week Mr. Marshall was somewhat mysterious about financial backing in his purchase of the Braves. The theory that there might be Hearst money involved seemed unsound since young George Hearst is currently in disfavor with his father, who has broadcast notices to Hearst papers in all U. S. cities: DO NOT CASH ANY CHECKS OR GIVE ANY MONEY TO MY SON GEORGE— (signed) W. R. H.

If Mr. Marshall’s offer is accepted, Boston baseball addicts can gain a fair idea of what to expect by remembering what he has done with the Boston Redskins (professional football team). After a preliminary venture into professional sport as owner of the Palace A. C. (basketball), he bought the Redskins four years ago, popped them into red silk knickerbockers. It is his habit when watching games to run out on the field, annoy officials and abuse the coach for poor judgment. If he gets the Braves, he will supply brighter and more washable uniforms, a roster of new players,, a manager other than his wary friend and onetime roommate Bucky Harris. The prospect of owning football and baseball teams in the same city last week caused Mr. Marshall to discourse to reporters on one of his favorite dreams, the ideal sports stadium. This, planned for Boston in the near future, will be glass-enclosed, with movable bleachers and a press box on a monorail to follow the plays in football.

* Distant cousin of onetime Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams.