- Publish date:
19TH HOLE: THE READERS TAKE OVER
THE CHALLENGE
Sirs:
Many times in the past I have felt the urge to compliment—or criticize—a magazine. Usually I have been able to resist that urge. This time I cannot!
Your article, Design for Sport (May 14), was magnificent. As always with your magazine, my first trip through the latest issue was completely visual. As I went through the "DFS" section I commented, "Wow, these things should be in an art gallery, not in a sporting magazine." It wasn't until later, while reading the copy, that I realized that's exactly where they were. I'm sure they were more impressive in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED'S photographs than in reality.
Do you have any plans for making Kauffman's pictures available? I would be most interested in purchasing a set.
DAVID LINCOLN
Neenah, Wis.
•The Museum of Modern Art catalog, including all of Kauffman's pictures, is available at 25¢ a copy. Send your request to Design for Sport, Room 2001, Time and Life Building, New York 20, N.Y.—ED.
Sirs:
Congratulations to you on your extremely well-done piece, Challenge of Form. It's one of the best pieces on practical esthetics I have ever read.
WALTER HOVING
Chairman of the Board
Tiffany & Co.
New York City
Sirs:
It was not until reading your "Readers take over" section in the issue of May 21 ("If I want art, I"ll subscribe to an art magazine") that I began to realize how few people appreciate art. Every work put out by an artist involves many hours of thought and work. Your article, Design for Sport, proved it. I shall always contend that if people in this busy world would only stop their hurrying and take a good look around them, they would realize what a creative mind can achieve. Thank you for many hours of enjoyable, interesting reading.
JUDIE L. SARAMA
Buzzards Bay, Mass.
Sirs:
We of the Houghton Sulky Company are both happy and proud that our product was selected to be included.
W. H. FOSTER
Marion, Ohio
Sirs:
You should be very proud.
G. MARVIN SHUTT
Executive Director National Sporting Goods Association
Chicago
THE CHAMPION
Sirs:
About two or three times a year the cover and lead story of your magazine make me you'll take a million want to regurgitate. These are the issues that feature prominent boxers of the day. I, like many Americans, am an enthusiastic sports fan. Like most other fans also, the thought of a heavyweight boxing fight for the world championship has always sent a thrill of anticipation through me.
But the thought of such a bout is as close as I can come to seeing one. To my knowledge, this is the only major sporting event in this country or any other country in which the public is not allowed to participate by radio or television.
Boxing used to be a sport for all Americans. The champion was not satisfied to fight one fight a year, but fought any and all contenders, and the public was allowed to listen on the radio or watch on television. This is as it should be.
In this affluent age, perhaps I am the only reader of your magazine who cannot afford to purchase a ticket to watch Floyd Patterson fight. If so, I apologize. However, I feel it is totally unfair for him to make one big fight a year, reaping a big swag off it through closed TV, and deny the majority of the people the opportunity of seeing how good or bad a fighter he is.
WARD ROSEN
George West, Texas
Sirs:
I have just finished reading your article Out of the Night (May 28) by Floyd Patterson, and rather than compliment you I want to thank you. I hope some of those who are so ready to condemn boxing will read this article and sec what that savage, bloody sport has done for this backward, unfortunate boy.
GARY BREWER
Caribou, Me.
Sirs:
I was fortunate not to experience the kind of childhood Patterson did, but being a human being I can readily feel the agony, the tyranny and the aimless days that this man witnessed.
It is a situation that could happen to any of us, the John Does who live in the slums or the John Smiths who live on Park Avenue. A true champion, Patterson defeated his No. I enemy, himself, to restore himself to a normal life after such unfortunate mishaps. In so doing he gave reason for me to hope that others will sit down and take note of this, and someday become true champions in their own walks of life.
WILLIAM A. LIGHTBOUND
Brooklyn
BIG ROCK
Sirs:
In your May 28 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, under the section SCORECARD, you introduce an attack upon the fisherman's yo-yo with this sentence: "In Little Rock, Ark., a town little noted for its awareness of world events, the march of progress has taken another broad step to the rear." Being angry at fishermen who use the yo-yo, you seem to have reasoned that because one J. W. White Jr. manufactures a yo-yo in Little Rock, thereby our city somehow becomes an accomplice to this crime.
You might as well castigate Chicago for all the ills of the Atomic Age because the first nuclear reactor was developed there in 1942, or just as logically condemn New York as the seat of Communist power in the United States because the U.N. building houses offices for Russia and its satellites.
Little Rock is the Arkansas home of Senator John McClellan, the nemesis of wrongdoing in and out of government; it is loved by Senator Bill Fulbright, the forward-looking originator of the Fulbright Scholarships and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; it is now home base for Congressman Wilbur Mills, regularly voted one of the most influential men in the Congress and chairman of the significant tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. Bill Dickey, Yankee Hall of Famer, lives here. Ed Stone, of worldwide architectural fame, knows it as the capital of his native state. J. S. McDonnell of McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, maker of John Glenn's Friendship 7 space capsule, was reared here and still loves it as home.
We in Little Rock are just as good and just as smart (and sometimes quite as bad) as people everywhere and just as sensitive to gratuitous, unfair criticism. If you are the kind of "sports" you claim to be, I invite you to retract the unkindness reflected by the quotation and show your readers that sportsmanship can be demonstrated on editorial pages as well as on field, stream and gridiron.
WILLIAM H. BOWEN
Little Rock, Ark.
UNPERFECT PAUL
Sirs:
The record, in my opinion, does not support your flattering story about Army's coach, "Pepsodent Paul" Dietzel (May 28). His only departure from the path of veracity was not, as he suggests, when he told a meeting of Louisiana State University alumni that he would never coach anywhere but at LSU. When we at The Times-Picayune reported that Coach Dietzel, still under a long-term contract with LSU, was in touch with officials at the United States Military Academy about taking the West Point coaching job, Dietzel publicly described this report as based on a "silly assumption." Nor is Coach Dietzel's recruiting record as perfect as readers of your piece might believe. If Coach Earl Blaik still thinks that "if Dietzel so much as gets his feet under the supper table with a boy, that boy is his," he might ask Paul how he missed getting Perry Lee Dunn, now a star back at the University of Mississippi, and many other good southern boys.
GEORGE W. HEALY JR.
Editor
New Orleans
FRONT RUNNERS
Sirs:
I will nominate John L. Rotz for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED'S 1962 Sportsman of the Year award. The Preakness undoubtedly proved that nice guys do not finish last.
MAL MATTUK
St. Paul
Sirs:
Your treatment of our Kentucky Derby was most unusual and creative. Artist Tomi Ungerer's interpretation of the race, the crowd and the excitement were excellent.
BERT THOMAS COMBS
Governor
Frankfort, Ky.
