THE RIGHT TOPLAY
TheInternational Golf Sponsors Association will meet in Milwaukee on July 18-19 todecide, among other things, whether professional golfers should be allowed toplay abroad while tournaments are being conducted simultaneously in the UnitedStates. Recently, both Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, as members of theProfessional Golfers' Association, were ordered to skip the Canada Cup becauseit conflicted with the Memphis Open. Fearing fines and suspensions by the PGA,neither Palmer nor Player competed.
A golfer withthe ability and drawing power of Arnold Palmer is the finest type of emissarythat America can send anywhere in sports. He is colorful, dramatic,well-mannered and exciting to watch under any set of circumstances. It is moreimportant to America and to the game of golf to have him represent us in theCanada Cup, or the British or French Open, than to have him play in the AuntKatherine's Root Beer Tourney or the Safe-buy Used Car Round Robin.
If the sponsorsare wise, they will vote to take a little money out of a few promoters' fistsand let the rest of the world see the best of what the U.S. has to offer ingolf.
RIDING HIGH
Archie Moore,the light heavyweight champion of the thinking men's states of New York,California and Massachusetts, appeared the other evening at the Village Gate, ajazz pad in New York's Greenwich Village. "I am here," said Mr. Moore,"on behalf of a new magazine which I have invested my money into. It iscalled Jazz Day, and I shall write the publisher's memo-letter-diary." AsMoore spoke he snatched a roast beef on rye big enough for two and devoured italong with a pickle and a tumbler of water.
"At theformative stage of my career," he continued, "I wanted to be a trumpetplayer, and I used to sail up and down the Missouri on river boats, listeningto the great trumpet players of that day, the men with the iron lips. Ofcourse, out of a feeling of general economics, I chose to get into boxingbecause there was more money in it. The new magazine [it will be out aroundLabor Day] will have musicians themselves writing stories."
Moore was askedif he thought musicians could write. "Now," he said, "musicianshave the most literate minds of all people. All the world's great love letterswere actually written by musicians, the love songs." Moore pausedmomentarily to eat a corned beef sandwich. "Remember that music is thegreat stimulator. Why is it that the Colonel Bogey March [The Bridge on theRiver Kwai]—dumdum, dumdumdum dum dum dum—picked up the weary men in War II andmade them march 30 and 40 miles? In War I the music of John Philip Sousa helpedthe troops go to battle. Even myself, at this stage of my boxing career, needsthings to pick me up in my training. I find that I need the happy music, and Iget it in the jazz."
We left Moore atThe Gate as he walked around shaking hands. The sight brought to mind a song,music by Lucky Thompson, words by Archie Moore. The title of the song is StayIn There, and the chorus goes like this:
You gotta stayin there 'cause tomorrow is the day
You gotta stayin there, then your cares will go away
You gotta stayin there, now don't you ever stop
You gotta stayin there if you wanta get to the top.
THE CRYSTALBALL
Over the pasttwo seasons in both the National and American leagues it has been necessary forteams to win an average of .617 of their one-run games and .656 of theirextra-inning games to earn their way into the World Series.
The Dodgers won33 of 55 one-run games (and the pennant) in 1959, then were the worst in theleague last season and could win only 20 of 47 such games (they finishedfourth). This year they have won 15 of 20 one-runners and four of their sixextra-inning games. Although the Pirates are currently playing bad baseball,they are still excellent in close games, having won nine, lost four one-runaffairs. The worst team under pressure thus far is the St. Louis Cardinals, whohave won only three of their 16 one-run games for a paltry winning percentageof .188.
In the AmericanLeague the Kansas City Athletics, currently in seventh place, have won seven of10 one-run games and four of five extra-inning games. Cleveland and Baltimoreare playing at a .625 percentage (10 wins, six losses), while the New YorkYankees have won only eight of 18 one-run games. Detroit has won but seven of16 one-runners while losing four of five extra-inning games. The Los AngelesAngels have the worst American League figure, having lost 15 of 21 one-rungames.
So it's theDodgers and Athletics for the World Series.
HOT DOGS IN THEROUND
Is nothingsacred? The traditional long, tubular frankfurter embedded in a roll has beenon the American sports and recreation menu at least since the turn of thecentury. Now, Variety reports, the American Kosher Provisions, Inc. has put outa round hot dog, to be eaten on a bagel, the whole concoction to be called a"fragel." The manufacturer tried it out at Coney Island, where probablymore hot dogs are consumed during a summer weekend than anywhere else in theworld. We are glad to hear it laid a nice, round egg.
We predict thatthe hot-dog-in-the-round will be shunned all the way from Candlestick Park toSuffolk Downs. However, after failing on the Boardwalk at Coney, AmericanKosher Provisions took its invention to fashionable Westbury, N.Y.; it plans asummer try-out at the Westbury Music Fair, where polo enthusiasts spend some oftheir evenings. American also is negotiating for the higher income brackettrade at Jones Beach, where, by charging a few cents more, it hopes to getstatus seekers who want to dissociate themselves from Coney Island's deeplydevoted proletarian admirers of the straight and honest frank.
INSIDE TRACK
•There is strongreason to believe that the current basketball scandal will spread to collegefootball. Some of the gamblers' "contact men" were football playersthemselves and are known to have considered fixing games. Hints frominvestigators in at least two states—North Carolina and New York—point to thisdevelopment, possibly in the next few weeks. It would be extremely naive foranyone to suppose that the attempted fixes of college football games in Floridaand Michigan last fall are the sum total of gamblers' efforts in this area.
•Ten differentbrands of golf balls were banned in last week's U.S. Open for failing to meetUnited States Golf Association standards. Some manufacturers, trying to cash inon the nation's $50 million golf ball business, have been putting out ballsless than the required 1.68 inches in diameter and more than the specifiedweight of 1.62 ounces. Increasing the weight or reducing the size of the ballaffects the distance it can be hit. Joe Dey, the executive director of USGA,says: "This has become a real problem in the last two years. The golf ballcompanies keep after us to loosen our specifications so that their balls willtravel farther and farther."
•Thedisqualification of Our Hope in last Saturday's $50,000 Whitney at New York'sBelmont Park and the awarding of first place to 1960's Horse of the Year,Kelso, was only the fifth disqualification in a race worth $50,000 or oversince 1958. In that time nearly 400 such races have been run.
KOMSOMOLSKITENNIS
A great manythings the Communists used to denounce as bourgeois are now Soviet achievementsor ambitions, and that goes for sports. Tennis for women is the latest athleticoffensive. At Beckenham, England last week Anna Dmitrieva, 20, a MoscowUniversity language student, beat the fifth-ranked American, Donna Floyd, 6-2,6-0; and Dmitrieva and Valerie Titova, 27, a librarian in the Kiev Academy ofSciences, beat the American girls Nancy Richey and Sally Moore in doubles.
The Russianshave gone after their victories with planning and method. In 1956 a party ofRussian tennis players and officials showed up at Wimbledon and took countlessreels of film on Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall, Shirley Fry and Althea Gibson. InRussia tennis players go through calisthenics, running and lightweight trainingfour or five times a week, exercise designed to improve their reflexes andendurance on a tennis court. New courts have been built all over Russia, andthe game grows more popular every year.
There are nograss courts in Russia, so the players arrived at Beckenham in time to snatchtwo days' practice on grass. Their coach, Sergei Andreev, six times hiscountry's champion, and Vladimir Balva, a physical culture lecturer, are alwaysalongside the court whenever their players are in action, taking voluminousnotes and making films. In the evening they lecture their players on what wentwrong during the day, using their crammed notebooks as texts. Their aim is tobury the West under a green lawn, and they have made a start.
PLAIN BENDEPARTS
Benjamin AllynJones died the other day not far from Calumet Farm in Lexington, Ky. He was 78and the finest trainer of Thoroughbred horses that America has ever produced.His name is on the records for having trained six Kentucky Derby winners, oneTriple Crown winner and four Horses of the Year. Ben Jones was not the mostbeloved man ever to appear on or around the race track; but when a man keepssending out horses to beat horses which other men have sent out, love isquickly lost along the way.
Records alone,though, hardly tell the full story of B. A. Jones. He was, for more than 50years, an immense character among race track characters. The nicknames thatfollowed him around tell quite a bit about him. Jones was known as Crying Benbecause he was always trying to get the best deal for his horses from thehandicappers, and the thought of one of his racers carrying 130 pounds broughttears to his eyes and a throb of indignation to his system. He was known asPlain Ben because he spoke seldom but, when he did, usually hit nails (orpeople) right on the head. Of course, when he wasn't hitting things on the headhe was known as Lying Ben, for he often lied deliberately to mislead hisopponents. He was also known as White-Hat Ben because he almost always worewhite hats, probably on the theory that, if a man has to wear a hat at all, awhite one is as noncommittal as any. He was, in his youth, a heavy bettor and agood barroom brawler.
Ben Jones,withal, was a man of color, dignity, ability and wit. He had his own theorieson race horses, and they worked well. One of his theories was, "If a horseis no good, sell him for a dog. Then shoot the dog."
THEY SAID IT
•Nate Dolin, a vice-president of the ClevelandIndians, trying to find a happy note in the sagging attendance (down more than100,000 from 1960) at Indian home games at Municipal Stadium: "Children'ssales are 2% higher than they have ever been."
•John Bridgers, Baylor University football coach:"We're a Baptist school, and in football we strive for the same spirit asthe three Baptists who were shipwrecked on a deserted island and immediatelyset a Sunday school attendance goal of four."
•Johnny Logan, former shortstop for the MilwaukeeBraves, on being traded recently to the Pittsburgh Pirates: "That Dressen[Milwaukee's manager] is a real capable man, but I have not had a conversationwith him in the last two years and they tell me he's a greatconversationalist."
•After Cotton Davidson and Max Boydston of theAmerican Football League's Dallas Texans defeated Mike Falls and Jerry Tubbs ofthe National Football League's Dallas Cowboys in a cow-milking contest, Fallsturned to Tubbs and said: "Well, Jerry, we did it again—lost."
ILLUSTRATION
