SCORECARD
REWARD
When President Johnson signed the wilderness preservation bill last week, he brought to an end seven years of struggle that, one hopes, future generations will appreciate. There will now be 9.1 million acres of the U.S. that must remain forever wild. Hunting and fishing will be allowed, under regulation, and boating will continue in areas in which it now exists. Otherwise, nature will rule in her own magnificent way. This magazine, which long urged passage of such a bill, applauds.
It applauds, too, such men as Senator Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico, who, 3½ years ago, had a choice of Senate committee chairmanships and picked the Interior Committee so that he might push conservation and recreation measures. After passage was assured, Senator Anderson decided it was time to think of his own succeeding generations and not just those of all the people. So he bought a 30-acre homesite on the West Fork of the Gila River, just a mile or so from the eastern edge of the Gila Wilderness Area. It was announced that the Senator would turn it into a "rustic retreat enabling his family to enjoy, as he has enjoyed, the broad vistas of precipitous mountains and unspoiled forests."
Because some might have thought it unethical to purchase a site of which he had advance knowledge, Senator Anderson waited until the legislation was passed. By then, of course, the price of the property had gone up. Well, it's priceless anyway.
AMENDS
There is reason to believe that the privilege of blackballing basketball officials will be taken from Southern Conference coaches at the conference meeting in December. Shock waves are still reverberating through the conference after a two-thirds vote of the coaches resulted in the barring of two highly competent officials—Charley Eckman and Lou Bello (SI, Aug. 31). Now a committee on officials is making a study of the matter.
It is gratifying to report also that Conference Commissioner Lloyd Jordan has seized on some technicalities to make it possible for Bello to officiate this winter at several conference and nonconference games. There is, furthermore, every indication that Bello will enjoy full status in time for the 1965-66 season. As for Eckman, he probably could have drawn some sort of reprieve, but he disqualified himself when he signed to officiate at National Basketball Association games.
SAFE AND POSSIBLY SANE
Word from the U.S. Patent Office indicates that the world is becoming both a more sybaritic and a safer place for dogs. The office has just granted a patent for a poodle-grooming device which sends currents of warm, soothing air over the dog while he is being clipped. Then there is a patented life preserver for small animals, principally dogs, notoriously prone to falling from or jumping from boats. The jacket has a large supporting section which goes under the animal's belly and smaller sections beside each ear to keep his head up.
HANDS ACROSS THE PACIFIC
The first Japanese ever to play in baseball's major leagues is big for a Japanese and was quick to prove that he may be big enough for any man's league. In his first appearance for the San Francisco Giants, Masanori Murakami, hereinafter to be known as Masi, as he is to his teammates, pitched one inning against the New York Mets, allowing a harmless single while striking out two of the other three batters he faced. One of three Japanese in the Giants' system, Masi is almost 6 feet tall and weighs 180 pounds, has a curve, a screwball and a deceptive fast ball, but eschews off-speed pitches.
"The players here are all big and strong, and if I throw changeup, they will hit the long ball," he explains, pronouncing "long" as "wrong"—and that may be more than his Japanese accent showing. Outside of such baseball talk, Masi's English is limited. This might have made him an outcast on the clique-ridden Giants. Ah, but not so. Masi speaks Spanish, a fact that ought to make him the closest of friends with Jesus Maria Rojas Alou and Orlando Manuel Cepeda.
DAISY AMONG THE EDELWEISS
More than a score of persons have died trying to scale the almost vertical 4,800 feet of Switzerland's dread Eiger north wall—a fact known all too well to the parents of blithe and blue-eyed Daisy Voog, German track and field star and secretary for an insurance firm in Munich. For the past two summers Daisy spent her weekends in the Dolomites practicing for an assault on the north wall. No woman ever had done it and precious few men. But last year she saw movies taken by friend Toni Hiebeler of his successful attempt and exclaimed: "I want to do this, too."
A month ago she almost made it but had to quit halfway when the weather turned foul. Setting out for a second try with Hiebeler and Werner Bittner, a mechanic friend and experienced climber, Daisy said to her mother: "Keep your fingers crossed." Mother Voog did and Daisy, her only child, made it.
FOOTBALL FASHION NOTE
At Lehigh University, high-heeled shoes will be the thing for football this year and at Lafayette College it will be leopard-skin footwear. Not for coeds. For football players.
Dr. Emil Havach, a chiropodist and Lehigh's head trainer, devised shoes with ‚Öû-inch-high heels for slow-pulling guards and sluggish fullbacks. The heels, he said, will help players assume a proper stance and overcome a malady known as "short-heel-cord condition."
Lafayette, which will meet Lehigh on the gridiron for the 100th time this November 21, will wear leopard-skin footgear simply because the team's nickname is the Leopards.
MRS. MAC AND JIMMY
Herself no taller than a jockey, Mrs. Jessie MacKenzie of Victoria, B.C. became the first woman in North America to receive a Thoroughbred trainer's license and thereafter had her picture taken in the winner's circle in Mexico, Canada and the U.S. She continued to train until she was 78 years old.
Her best horse—and best friend—was a little (14.2 hands) stallion named Jimmy Rogan who won 25 races, had 48 seconds and 33 thirds. Jimmy had his quirks. In his later years he would refuse to join the parade to the post, but instead insisted on stopping to study the mutuel board with the intensity of a $2 bettor before getting into the starting gate. Pacific Northwest racing fans were so taken with the "wee" horse that they plied him with carrots, oats and sugar every Christmas. Jimmy won his last race when he was 17. When he died in 1962 at the age of 39 he was the oldest Thoroughbred in North America.
After Mrs. Mac and Jimmy retired, the Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association of British Columbia held a "day," turned over to her a purse of $1,500 and helped her to spend her remaining years in modest comfort. After a long life of healthy compassion for and interest in Thoroughbreds, Mrs. Mac died August 31 at the age of 91.
"She was a fine lady. She was good for racing. She loved horses," said William Lochead, B.C. and Canadian president of the HBPA. Not a bad epitaph.
ALMA MATER
That astonishing McClymonds High School in Oakland, Calif. has produced two more top professional athletes. Paul Silas and Cleveland (Swish) McKinney have been signed to play basketball for the St. Louis Hawks, joining another McClymonds alumnus, Bill Russell, in the pro game. And, of course, two-thirds of the Cincinnati Reds' regular outfield (Vada Pinson and Frank Robinson) is from McClymonds.
Pride in athletic achievement is the key to it all. (The school has always had a predominantly Negro student body and until very recently did little to encourage pride in academics.) The man chiefly responsible both for developing athletes and stimulating their pride is all-sports Coach George Powles, who is white. For some 20 years in and around McClymonds he and Mrs. Powles have devoted themselves to the student-athletes, offering doughnuts, milk and hard advice after hours, coaching at all hours. Vada Pinson still phones when the Reds come to town, but Robinson has become persona non grata. He jilted a girl Mrs. Powles was fond of.
Best remembered at McClymonds is Bill Russell, as much for his hypochondria as for his spectacular play. Always tense before a game, he would be overwhelmed by imaginary aches. Once he noticed that one shoulder drooped below the other and iron-hot pain shifted from shoulder to shoulder. Arising from the bench, one knee would buckle under him, unless it was the other. He would look down to see if his knee was attached to his thigh, but be unable to tell because his eyeballs would be twitching. "Coach," Russell would say, clutching his side, "get a doctor. I've got appendicitis." The coach would answer, "Your appendix is on the other side." "My tongue," Russell responded on one occasion. "I can't feel it in my mouth." "Then don't talk," the coach replied. "Just go out and play."
Which Bill did, rather effectively.
LONG VOYAGE HOME
Back in 1937 a team of 20 boys from Mount Vernon, Ohio started a minor Middle West craze when, under the glow of automobile headlights, they began a softball game before dawn and played 338 innings. It was, they said, a record. Now Mount Vernon, a sleepy community of 16,000, is at it again.
At 6 a.m. one day last week 10 of its sturdier teen-agers, including two girls, jumped into a chilly pool at the Mount Vernon Country Club and took turns churning the 25-yard course until 7:44 p.m., at which time they claimed a new world record for the mixed-relay 50-mile swim. Their time of 13 hours 44 minutes 55.8 seconds actually did lower the recognized Amateur Athletic Union record by 34 minutes 36.2 seconds. That one was set last January 4 by the Tarpon Swim Club of Farmington, N. Mex.
Sanctioned by the Ohio AAU, the record attempt required 3,520 laps. Each swimmer covered five miles.
It is possible that Mount Vernon has started another craze—and we hope so. This one is healthier than phone-booth cramming, cleaner than greased-pig chasing and much more uplifting than panty-raiding or Beatle bopping.
DOUBLE ACE
There are about 12,000 holes in one made every year, but The Golfer's Handbook, the authoritative world guide, lists only three instances of successive holes in one and these were made, you may be sure, on par-3 holes. N. L. Manley, a production planner for an electronics firm and a four-handicap player considered the longest hitter at the Del Valle Country Club in Saugus, Calif., must, then, be regarded as something rather special. The other day he scored aces at the club's 330-yard par-4 7th hole and at the 290-yard par-4 8th hole, claiming the longest consecutive holes in one of recorded golf history.
Each of the holes is a dogleg and each is downhill. Manley used a four-iron on the 7th and a three-wood on the 8th. A month previously he had holed out on 7 with a four-iron. Last year he made two holes in one. In his record-shattering round Manley had six birdies, eight pars, two bogeys and the two aces for a 27-34—61 that shattered his own course record of 65 for the 6,017-yard par-71 layout.
ILLUSTRATION
THEY SAID IT
•Duffy Daugherty, Michigan State football coach, when asked, "Who are you happiest to see return to camp this fall?": "Me."
•Mrs. Jim Prestel, wife of the Minnesota Vikings' 275-pound defensive tackle: "This season I plan to look at the whole game; last year I just watched Jim."
•Tony Lema after spending a couple of days at Arnold Palmer's house: "I got lost in the vault."
•George Jessel, after a visit to Shea Stadium: "The Mets are engineering a big trade. They're offering two outfielders, three pitchers and two infielders to the Dodgers in exchange for a life-size photograph of Sandy Koufax."
•Lou Michaels, of the Pittsburgh Steelers, after chasing scrambler George Mira of the San Francisco 49ers all through an exhibition football game: "Mira has got a chance to be one of the greatest quarterbacks that ever lived—if he lives."
