I could not make this up if I wanted to. Frida Kahlo tosses out the first pitch in a benefit baseball game played by notables of the Marxist Maulers vs. Studs Lonigan A.C. and umpired by Carlo Tresca. Also, dancing ’til dawn. On a personal note, I got to know the catcher for the Marxist Maulers well late in his life, but I never heard this story.

‘All Set for the Ball Game!’ from Socialist Appeal. Vol. 2 No. 50. November 19, 1938.

The sandlots on New York’s lower East Side have been resounding all week long. Jim Farrell, captain and stellar pitcher for the Studs Lonigan A.C., has been putting his boys through their paces and doing no mean job of it, either! “When my boys get out on that dance floor,” says Jim “Studs” Farrell, “we’re gonna make those Marxist Maulers look like a bunch of second-rate bush-leaguers from the sticks. And is my screwball smoking hot these days! I can just see those Marxists fanning the air!”

The day of the big game is drawing near. Don’t forget: it’s next Wednesday, Thanksgiving eve at the Hotel Center, 108 West 43rd Street, New York City.

Frida Rivera, wife of artist Diego Rivera, will be on hand to throw out the first ball. The contest will be umpired by the veteran Carlo Tresca, whose extended lack of acquaintance with the rules ensures scrupulous fairness to all.

And it’s all for the benefit of the American Fund for Political Prisoners and Refugees!

Here’s the line-up for the big game. Who you betting on?

Marxist Maulers

George Novack… Capt. & pitcher
Max Shachtman…Right field
James Burnham…2nd base
George Clarke…3rd base
B.J. Widick…Center field
Lyman Paine…Left field
Frank Lovell…Catcher
S. Stanley…1st base
J. Wasserman…Shortstop
Felix Morrow (mascot)

Studs Lonigan A.C.

James T. Farrell…Capt. & pitcher
Max Eastman…Center field
Sidney Hook…Shortstop
James Rorty…Catcher
Dwight MacDonald…2nd base
Arthur Pincus…1st base
David Glusker…Right field
Eliot E. Cohen…3rd base
John McDonald…Left field
Al Margolies (mascot)

The Militant was a weekly newspaper begun by supporters of the International Left Opposition recently expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 and published in New York City. Led by James P Cannon, Max Schacthman, Martin Abern, and others, the new organization called itself the Communist League of America (Opposition) and saw itself as an outside faction of both the Communist Party and the Comintern. After 1933, the group dropped ‘Opposition’ and advocated a new party and International. When the CLA fused with AJ Muste’s American Workers Party in late 1934, the paper became the New Militant as the organ of the newly formed Workers Party of the United States. After the Workers Party (International Left Opposition) entered the Socialist Party in 1936, the Trotskyists published Socialist Appeal as the paper of the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party” replacing New Militant as the main voice of Fourth Internationalist in the US. Socialist Appeal became the weekly organ of the new Socialist Workers Party in early 1938 after the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the the Socialist Party. Edited by James Cannon and Max Shachtman,Felix Morrow, Albert Goldman, in 1941 Socialist Appeal became The Militant again.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1938/v2n50-nov-19-1938-SA.pdf