19TH HOLE: THE READERS TAKE OVER

"ARETE" (CONT.)
Sirs:
When your editorial staff meets to pick the Sportsman of the Year, may they reflect on the deeds of a young man who is surrounded by legal red tape, racketeers, immature newspapermen and hungry promoters: Floyd Patterson.

Despite these, he did what no other fighter had accomplished before him.

He is the most dedicated athlete competing today, and he exhibits grace and modesty.
FRED ENFIELD
Newark

Sirs:
I nominate Mickey Thompson for showing that being a hot rodder does not mean being a juvenile delinquent.
LAWRENCE THOMPSON
Springfield, Mass.

PUCKS AND PIGEONS
Sirs:
Wonderful hockey shots all right (Clay Pigeons and Cold Sweat, Dec. 19), but if I'm not mistaken the A.P. scooped you a couple of weeks ago with the best goalie picture of all—Gump Worsley getting clonked in Detroit.
JOHN GOODRICH
New York City

Sirs:
Your picture layout on the life of a goalie in action was one of the most attractive hockey spreads in the history of this colorful game. Incidentally, did you know that George St. Marie's photograph of Jacques Plante in a helpless sprawl, which you used, won first prize in the annual National Hockey League photography contest?
HERB GOREN
New York City

SUGAR AND SHAME
Sirs:
It is a shame that Sugar Ray Robinson, after once again proving himself a true champion and one of the greatest boxers of all time, should be forced, through an incompetent method of determining a winner, to forfeit his claim to the championship.
FRED SILVERSTEIN JR.
Nashville

Sirs:
The posting of scoring round by round is one of the finest ideas I've heard ("Who Win It?", SCORECARD, Dec. 12). It would certainly do a lot for boxing.
KEN MCELROY
Columbus, Ohio

TRA IN THE SNOW
Sirs:
In your article entitled "The TRA's Troubles" (SCORECARD, Dec. 12), you wrote, "Mrs. Everett departed with a gratuitous mot: 'Drayton couldn't track an elephant in the snow.' "

The last, part of the statement was correct, but Mrs. Everett did not mention Drayton by name. What she said was that the Thoroughbred Racing Protection Bureau, headed by him, "sent us an agent in charge who...couldn't track an elephant in the snow."

Arlington-Washington spearheaded the handful of tracks that founded the Thoroughbred Racing Association back in 1942. We at Arlington Park and Washington Park have been trying ever since to make them progressive, aggressive, productive, businesslike representatives of every Thoroughbred race track in America, subsidizing a police arm that would wipe out every undesirable element in the sport.

We are as proud of Thoroughbred racing and as vigilant against insidious influences today as we were one hour before we resigned from the TRA-TRPB.
HARRY SHEER
Arlington Heights, Ill.

RIGHT'S RIGHT
Sirs:
According to your account of the National Championship Retriever Trials at Weldon Springs, there were four finalists (How to Bring 'em Back Best, Dec. 5). In naming only the other three, you do an injustice to Medlin's Texas Right, a magnificent young black Labrador owned and handled by C. Alan Fischer of Hillsborough, Calif.
JAY A. NOREM
Dallas

FLAB
Sirs:
In your active campaigns for racket-free boxing, open tennis, Tennessee walking horses, and most recently dope-free athletics (Our Drug-happy Athletes, Nov. 21), you have neglected one vital issue—that of improved physical fitness. Americans are so engulfed in intellectual worries that they are forgetting about their own flabby, listless selves.
WALTER PARRY JR.
Goleta, Calif.

•For high-level notice of the flabby American, see page 14.—ED.

DEAR DEER
Sirs:
A loud hoorah for Barbara McAllister and her "sweet dear little buck" (SCORECARD, Dec. 12).

Sure, sure, I know: a) It's better to be shot than to die of starvation; b) the "odds" are all in favor of the buck getting away; c) if somebody sends me a venison steak I'll eat it and enjoy it.

But I still can't see any damn fun in shooting the beautiful creatures.
H. B. GILBERT
Toronto

PHOTO

GUMP GETS A LUMP

PHOTO

MEDLIN'S TEXAS RIGHT IN FINAL TRIALS