- Publish date:
19TH HOLE: THE READERS TAKE OVER
TEX VS. DAN
Sirs:
Congratulations to Dan Jenkins on his part of the World Series of football article (The Two Pro Football Leagues Must Meet, Dec. 16). I will donate $50 to Pete Rozelle's favorite charity if the American Football League does not beat the National Football League in their first championship game. Didn't Tex Maule pick the Dallas Cowboys?
MILTON SKIFF
Cortland, N.Y.
SCATTERING SEEDS
Sirs:
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED has done a great service to the sport of skiing in bringing into focus the injustice of the seeding that applies to the 1964 Winter Olympics (International Ski Scandal, Dec. 16). A thorough investigation is now under way because of your story. Coach Bob Beattie will do his best in the seeding meetings, which will precede the European races, but he may not be able to buck the system. Your support in this matter is sure to help his cause. Much, however, needs to be done in the few weeks remaining to assure that the U.S. ski team will not be beaten before it reaches the starting gate.
There is no place for bureaucracy and provincialism in the Olympic Games. All we ask is that the American ski team be seeded on the basis of its international and national performance since December 1961.
RALPH A. DES ROCHE
National Chairman, U.S. Olympic Ski
Team Fund
New York City
DIRTY POOL?
Sirs:
Three cheers for Frank Ramsey on his fine article, Smart Moves by a Master of Deception (Dec. 9). I'm looking forward to comparable articles by experts in other sports. Here, for example, are some titles that might prove useful: Putting It Over on Your Caddie, Beanball and Spitter Techniques, or perhaps Principles of Face-mask Tackling.
LEE C. YOUNG
Norman, Okla.
Sirs:
Ramsey is singularly frank, and you are courageous. I wager that you will receive more denunciations for sanctioning cheating than commendations for admiring sagacity. I hereby vote to commend you.
The guileless would abolish the subtle nuances from sport and call them cheating. But Ramsey's type of "cheating" adds dimension to athletic contests, without which they would become rather pedestrian and even, in some cases, brutish.
BRIAN J. KAVANAGH
San Francisco
Sirs:
It seems like dirty pool to me.
BROCK PUTNAM
Amherst, Mass.
G WHIZ
Sirs:
Your article entitled, A New Grip on the Game (Dec. 16), described my new golf club grip in such glowing terms that my phone has been ringing steadily ever since. Golfers who want sets of my new "G" Grips are calling from all over the country.
The only trouble is that at least half of the people calling me insisted that the name of my new grip is the "6" Grip—because SPORTS ILLUSTRATED said so.
JOHN K. GARRITY
President,
The "G" Grip Corporation
Fairfield, Conn.
•Herewith apologies to "G" Grip President Garrity and assurances to our readers that only a typographical error (in approximately one-third of the press run) could change a "G" Grip to a "6" Grip—ED.
DREAM RATINGS
Sirs:
Well, now you've done it! Leaving UCLA out of your top-20 basketball rating (Scouting Reports, Dec. 9) is like playing a round of golf without a putter.
I suggest you take your next rating at the end of this season, which will surely find the Bruins a bit higher than your "surprise packages."
L. D. McBAIN
Covina, Calif.
Sirs:
I don't know where you got your information from, but here is how it should be: No. 1 Loyola, No. 2 NYU, No. 3 Cincinnati.
GUS ROTH
Harrison, N.Y.
Sirs:
I was happy to see you rated Loyola No. 6 again this year. I feel this will give it the determination, as it did last year, to reign as the king of college basketball.
J. A. DOWNEY
Chicago
PERSIAN VERSION
Sirs:
Being a longtime Monopoly fan, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed J. F. Wilkinson's article, The Play-money Game That Made Millions (Dec. 2). As an ardent baseball fan, I was grateful for something to enjoy in the off season.
DOLORES FERREIROS
Union, N.J.
Sirs:
I have been playing Monopoly for over 25 years myself, but when my family and I went to Iran in 1960 for a tour of duty with the U.S. Army there we found a Persian version of the game. It is called Iropoly. There is no basic change except airports replace railroads (which are practically nonexistent in Iran, anyway), two insurance companies are substituted for the utilities, a hospital is used in lieu of the jail and lottery cards (lotteries on a national scale are operated once a week in Iran) replace Chance and Community Chest. The game is played with Iranian currency, rials. One collects 5,000 rials (roughly $66) when passing Start.
The streets and properties for sale in Iropoly are typical Teheran city streets—Shahreza, Soraya, Pahlavi, Jaleh and Tir. Each square is marked in both English and the Iranian language, Farsi.
One gets the same thrills from Iropoly as one gets from Monopoly. We brought home a set with us when we returned this summer. But we can't help wondering if Parker Brothers are realizing royalties from the game of Iropoly.
JAMES D. GOELTZ, USA
Fort Riley, Kans.
•No.—ED.
A POINT
Sirs:
It never fails. The minute anyone suggests changing our archaic laws governing firearms, people like you immediately seize on the most extreme views expressed and repeat them as gospel, as the general viewpoint (SCORECARD, Dec. 9). You holler that our hunters and target shooters will be victimized while the mugger will still have his gun.
No one is yelling for a complete blackout of weapons. The idea of changing laws made years ago is not to punish the law-abiding citizen, but to make it harder for the other kind to obtain their weapons. Maybe no law could keep the real criminals from getting guns, but if even a few people who intended nothing but harm were denied guns, how many law-abiding citizens would that save? If just one, it would be worth it.
GEORGENE BRADFORD
Chicago
Sirs:
While I hesitate to carp in the face of the deep thinking reflected in your editorial, "Arms and the Law," I would suggest that you don't quite go far enough. What is really needed, as you must know, is a law to force everyone to carry a gun at all times. That would stop the muggers "going free," as you so exquisitely put it.
The core of the problem (oh, how right you are again!) is that some people don't understand guns. Do you know, I still meet people who think that guns are dangerous?
PAUL M. GARDNER
New York City
Sirs:
Your article defending the rights of the sportsman to own and buy guns is something that needed to be said. I only wish more people could see that harsh and stupid laws only apply to the law-abiding; the fanatics and criminals can always get guns. If I ever get in a position where I can afford only one magazine it will be SPORTS ILLUSTRATED.
GERALD DRAKE
St. Louis
SHOOT-OUT
Sirs:
The final regular-season pro football game between Pittsburgh and New York, which determines the Eastern Division representative in the NFL championship game, serves as a reminder of the erroneous way in which the NFL computes its league standings. The present method, determining the winner according to won-lost percentage (ties excluded), is not only confusing but downright unfair. A Pittsburgh win over New York would have given the Steelers an 8-3-3 record and .727 percentage (compared to the Giants' 10-4-0, .714) and thus, under the present system, the division title. Six times during the season Pittsburgh failed to defeat its opponent. New York failed only four times, yet Pittsburgh still wins the title.
Would it not be more sensible and equitable to follow the point-system procedure used by the National Hockey League whereby a win is worth 2 points, a tie 1 point, and a loss 0? This system considers the possibility of tie games and rates them where they belong—between a win and a loss.
Using this system, Pittsburgh's 8-3-3 record would be worth 19 points, and New York's 10-4-0 would be worth 20 points.
It is time the NFL awoke to the fact that, in the absence of a sudden-death period, the tie game is a definite part of pro football and should be rated accordingly.
BRADFORD S. CUSHING
Westboro, Mass.
