PLAY BALL, YOU ?!¢%&*#/S!
Sports and soldiering go closely together. Many of the games people play are simply war games in civvies—boxing, wrestling, fencing, lacrosse, the pentathlon, biathlon. The javelin is a spear, the shot a cannonball, the scull a cutdown galley, polo a refined charge of the light brigade. Then, of course, there is the common language of the two, so to speak, disciplines. Sports and war scribes are forever describing fiercely contested battles, slashing attacks, beleaguered defenses, crushing defeats, stunning victories, and they frequently brood about strategy, tactics, reserves, morale, esprit de corps.
Nor is this relationship simply an allegorical, archaeological or accidental one. It is intrinsic. More games are played in armies than anyplace else, because armies are where young men who like to play games are at and also because old men who run armies have always encouraged, and not infrequently even ordered, games to be played. Very probably we throw the javelin not because a bunch of GIs from Cohort III got together in their spare time to heave the old spear but because they were gotten together by a career centurion. "O.K., you men, after chow we break out the #*¢*%+S! javelin. I want to see who can throw the #*¢*%+S! thing the farthest. It'll give you some rest and recreation, like a #*¢*%+S! game. But I want this understood. If any of those #*¢*%+S! from the Vth Cohort throw it farther than you do next Saturday, don't plan on any passes for the rest of the #*¢*%+S! month."
The millennium-long infatuation of the military establishment for games and gamesmen was, of course, made a legitimate relationship by the famous conclusion drawn to explain the events of June 17 and 18, 1815. "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton," the Duke of Wellington said, and his pluperfect words on the subject always remain close to the lips of all athletic brass.
Predictably, however, the effects of the duke's sentiments have hardly been welcomed by enlisted men, whose favorite army sport is how to escape playing army sport. Speaking in rebuttal to Wellington, a specialist fourth class, who prepped on the sandlots of Indiana, declares: "These officers, they say, O.K. men, we want you to all sign up for soft-ball. You know why? You know where they go then—they go to the Officers' Club."
At the moment, the officer assigned by the United States Army to explain the Wellington Theory—and to have the contrary-thinking enlisted men execute it—is Colonel Don Miller. A big, obviously fit man of apparent high morale, Colonel Miller looks like what he once was, a varsity boxer at the University of Wisconsin, and what he now is, which is officially the top sport of the U.S. Army.
As chief of the Army Education and Morale Support directorate, in the Adjutant General's office, Miller is responsible for a variety of ancillary activities, including transporting dancing girls and rock 'n' roll groups to Vietnam for educational and morale reasons. However, a significant province of his administrative empire is the Army sports program, which occupies some 3,600 military and civilian employees, costs approximately $20 million a year and results in some 69 million acts of participation in something each year. All of this easily makes Miller the athletic director with the greatest jurisdiction in the country, and quite possibly the world, although comparative figures from the Moscow office of Colonel Boris Smirnoff are not available.
Considering his job and background, it is not surprising that Miller speaks not unlike a university athletic director when he begins to elaborate on the philosophy of his shop. "The Army," he says, "has learned that a strong sports program increases physical fitness, aggressiveness and loyalty, improves morale and provides wholesome recreational outlets for young men."
While Colonel Miller is a military man, what he says—"increases..., improves..., provides wholesome..., etc.,"—has been said and will surely be said again and again by the brass of the NCAA, AAU, USOC, by corporation executives, presidential consultants, school board directors, bowling-alley operators and many, many others who for one reason or another are sport promoters. So often is this dogma invoked to justify our current massive commitment—economic, energetic, emotional—to games-playing that it seems almost un-American to note that there is little hard evidence that supports the premise regarding the goodness of sports.
Take, for example, the linchpin assumption of both civilian and military philosophies of games: games are good for your health and they make you fit. There is some evidence that a certain amount of moderate exercise—walking, very slow running or calisthenics—may improve the quality and length of human life. However, there are only a few clinical studies which indicate that participation in conventional competitive sports does the same thing. In fact, here and there you will even get a whisper (as noted, all of this is faintly subversive) that games are actually bad for you.
"If you quote me I will deny it and maybe sue," a physician who is very big in sports medicine opened a discussion of the question. "However, the truth is that hard games constitute an unnatural and unnecessary strain on the system. I treat athletes when they are athletes for torn muscles, slipped discs, concussions, fractures, ulcers, fatigue, insomnia. I see them after they have quit playing. Many of them are hobbled by old injuries, seriously overweight because the muscle has turned to fat, prone to coronaries, restless because they miss the excitement and the adrenalin-stimulating situations. Considering the kind of world we live in, a slight, unmuscular man who sits at a desk adding up figures all day and watches a lot of television in the evening and avoids vigorous games like the plague is more likely to lead a long, healthy, happy life than an athlete."
At the request of Colonel Miller, several military and civilian secretaries spent several weeks sporadically reconnoitering file cabinets, looking for a report by Army physicians, which Miller recalled contradicted the critical diagnosis of games made by the bashful medicine man. In fact, Colonel Miller said he remembered that this report reached an exactly opposite conclusion—that gamesmen were fitter than non games-men. Besides, Colonel Miller said that both tradition and common sense indicated that games were good for you. As for tradition, Colonel Miller provided a position paper prepared for General Pershing in 1917. "The modern Army sports program more or less began with the Pershing study," said Miller. The half-century-old paper stated that it always has been recognized that playing games was good for soldiers.
As for common sense, Colonel Miller said that during his career he had often encountered units which were gung-ho for sports, and that these units were better ones military wise than ones which were not gung-ho for sports. Colonel Miller asked two of his subordinates, Lieut. Colonel Ingle and Lieut. Colonel Mendenhall, who were sitting in on the discussion, if they agreed with him. They both said they did agree, that their experience had been similar to his, that there was an obvious connection between physical fitness, military efficiency and gung-honess for games.
"Now it is quite possible that you might devise exercises that would have the same value as sports so far as fitness goes," Colonel Miller conceded judiciously, "but there is more to sports than just fitness. Sports teach men unit loyalty, to make decisions under pressure. Most important, sports are something men get enthusiastic about—participate in voluntarily on their own time. This promotes good morale. Any unit commander knows he is going to have fewer problems if his men are on the post playing softball or watching their buddies play than if they are off raising hell in some honky-tonk."
What Colonel Miller is touching on here is the second fundamental tenet of military sporting philosophy, the Clean Nose Theory, which reads in its entirety: "A man playing games may not be doing anything constructive, but he is keeping his nose clean." Though no great man has lent his name to this article of faith, the Clean Nose Theory is probably more ancient than the Wellington Theory. Also, belief in the Clean Nose Theory is probably the single most important reason why sports have, almost without historical exception, been insisted upon by all sorts of establishments—political, civilian or military—by responsible, conservative people in charge of tribes, cities, countries, schools, jails, birthday parties. Specifically in terms of the military, if you are a Colonel Miller, GIs who bust softballs are less trouble than those who bust and get busted by MPs.
"No," says Miller, forestalling a question, "I don't think any statistics have been collected, but it would be interesting to compare a good and bad sports unit in such things as AWOL, VD, court martial or reenlistment rates. I think you will find the unit where sports are encouraged to be the superior unit. At least that has been my personal experience."
Lieut. Colonels Ingle and Mendenhall again agreed that that has also been their experience, that sports do indeed keep men's noses clean. Indeed, the Army writes orders, administrates, spends money and issues bats and balls as if the goodness of sports was a matter of fact.
Generally the Army sports program is organized somewhat like that of a university, there being opportunities for both intramural and extramural play. Intramural games—where soldiers play against soldiers for battalion trophies in post leagues, in bowling alleys, swimming pools, or where soldiers organize sky-diving clubs, scuba clubs, hunting associations—are, according to Colonel Miller, much more important to the Army than extramural (varsity) competition, in which soldiers box marines, run footraces against NCAAers or play basketball against the Russians.
"When I'm called up on the carpet to report on the sports program," Colonel Miller confides, "the question is always, what are we doing to encourage participation at all levels? If sports help make better soldiers, we want to reach as many men as we possibly can. That is our mission."
Given the almost instinctive civilian suspicion that military commands are loaded with hanky-panky artists, and also given the great amount of proven guff one hears from civilian sports on this same subject ("So far as this university is concerned, having a girls' volleyball team is just as important as going to the Sugar Bowl"), the declaration that the Army prizes its slow-pitch softball leagues as much as it does its Olympic medal winners is a hard one to swallow. However, there is considerable evidence that the Army means what it says about participation—at least more than almost any civilian sporting agency. For one thing, Army discipline being somewhat stronger than academic, the wishes of a Colonel Miller being more important to a Special Services lieutenant passing out softballs than the opinions of a college president are to an assistant football coach passing out scholarships, the Army is simply better able to make sure that its men will practice what it preaches.
"Over all, our society is becoming more sedentary," declares Colonel Miller. "We are inducting more and more youngsters who haven't had much previous experience or interest in sports. Those are the ones we want to involve. The superjocks are going to play anyway. Also, we hope that our program will have some carry-over value for kids when they return to civilian life. That is one reason we are doing much more than we did formerly with golf, bowling, tennis, things like that."
And why is the Army of the U.S. of A. concerned with civilian games?
"The Army is as much concerned with the moral fiber of society as any other institution is."
And civilians practicing Army-learned sporting skills such as golf, bowling and tennis will beef up the society's moral fiber?
"We feel that way—that an interest in sports is a wholesome, constructive one."
As whiskey drinking, crap shooting, wearing your hair long, carrying picket signs are not?
"I suppose it gets down to basic assumptions about the kind of country we are and should be. Sports have contributed a lot to the traditional American way of life, helped make us an active, competitive, self-confident people. If we can help protect these American traditions by introducing, or reintroducing young men to sports, we feel that this is something worth doing."
The Army (for that matter, armies) has seldom been faulted for not being sporting enough. In fact, someday, if it has not already been said, some division commander is surely going to say: "The post softball championship was won on the battlefields of Vietnam." Certainly it is an American folk belief that the military is overly fond of sports and sportsmen, that being a jockstrap is the next best thing to, and even identical with, being a civilian.
I was in a CIC unit. We trained at Holabird and they told us most of us would go to Korea but a few would stay in Japan, which is where everyone wanted to stay, Japan being a much better place to be than Korea. It turned out that the Colonel in Japan was very big on baseball. I was sort of a weak-hit, weak-field shortstop, but Korea really wasn't all that bad.
Dear Congressman,
Enclosed is a clipping from our local sports page which I would like to bring to your attention. I would like to inquire why the man described in this story, Specialist E. Z. Hooker, has been a member of the Fort Sweaty basketball team for the past two years while my 19-year-old son, Cumbersome Tanglefoot, who though suffering from chronic hangnails was inducted into the Army four months ago, is now serving in Vietnam. As a mother, taxpayer and VOTER, I would like to know....
Colonel Delbert suddenly brought his swivel chair back up level and scooted it up to the desk. He spoke sharply, "Now tell me, Captain, just what are your prospects for next year...?"
"I have one new man, sir. Name is Prewitt. Fought for the 27th.... Runnerup in the welterweight division. He was transferred to my Company from the Bugle Corps."
"Remarkable," the Colonel said. ..."You've talked to him?"
"Yes sir," Holmes said. "He refuses to go out...."
Colonel Delbert turned his head on stiff shoulders. "He can't refuse to go out.... You just think he did. It's your job to see that he goes out."
—Excerpt from From Here to Eternity by James Jones.
"I have heard stories like that and a lot more," Colonel Miller says. "I won't say there wasn't some truth to some of them. There were commands where sports were overemphasized. There were abuses, examples of favoritism, cases where sports actually hindered a unit's primary mission. That, however, has been pretty much done away with by AR 28-52."
Army Regulation 28-52 was circulated in 1964. In effect, it de-emphasized what might have been called the Army's varsity-sports program. Games like inter-post football, which was taken in some commands as seriously as it is in most colleges, were simply scratched. (Except at overseas posts, the Army now almost exclusively plays touch and flag football.) All commanders were told to cool their hot varsity bloods, put most of them back on straight duty, and were reminded that the U.S. Army wanted hundreds of thousands of moderately fit, happy, orderly soldiers rather than just a few hundred super fit, super happy, super athletes.
AR 28-52 aside, the Army is still as big as ever on corralling, training and supplying athletes who can represent the United States in international competition. This is regarded as another of the semi-sociological, semi-self-serving missions of the military. "World-class performances by Army athletes naturally are good for our image," says Colonel Miller, who once was the U.S. Olympic boxing manager, "but it goes beyond that. It behooves us all to realize that sports have become a political football. We cooperate with the State Department and AAU in putting together representative teams. Let's face it, our adversaries have developed a line of propaganda to the effect that the United States is a soft, decadent country. If we send weak teams overseas we tend to confirm their propaganda, but a strong, winning team refutes it."
To keep the old international political football in the air, the Army has established two permanent sports training centers, one for prospective pentathloners at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and the other for biathloners at Fort Richardson, Alaska. In moments of athletic crisis, such as during an Olympic or Pan-American Games year, the Army does its bit by establishing temporary athletic outposts. This year, for example, some 42 Army track and fielders of Olympic potential were gathered together at Fort MacArthur in California. (From the group came two Olympic medals.) Twenty-six boxers were "assembled" for training at Fort Campbell, Ky., and a scattering of sharpshooters, basketball players, canoers, cyclists, fencers and wrestlers were told that their principal military mission in 1968 was to make themselves Olympian. Also, at any given time, the law of averages and those of the Selective Service System being what they are, the Army will have a few sporting exotics.This year, for instance, First Lieut. Arthur Ashe and Pfc. Charlie Pasarell have both been "made available" to go off to various parts of the world to win tennis matches.
Though the military careers of such competitors are different, they are not necessarily easier than those of less muscular and less coordinated GIs. Being an international winner, which is in essence what these athletes are under orders to be, nowadays takes more sweat, more discipline, more sacrifice of creature comforts than most people, including soldiers, find attractive.
For example, one pleasant August afternoon at Fort Campbell, the thermometer stood at 98°, and the humidity was not much less. Most of the 15,000 men on the post had been excused from rigorous physical activity. Not a few had repaired to one of the fort's swimming pools, air-conditioned bowling alleys or snack bars to wait out the heat. However, in a small, oppressive gym the members of the All-Army Boxing Team slugged away at each other and at bags. Every time a man hit something, or was hit himself, a spray of sweat rose into the already ripe air of the gym. Earlier that morning the boxers had done their roadwork. Later that night they would entertain the troops with a series of outdoor bouts. At the moment, at high noon in the gym, many of the pugs looked as if they might be willing to trade the soft athletic life for a tour of straight-duty soldiering.
Even when the Army's varsity boxing team is not in residence, Fort Campbell, by reason of its athletic traditions and resources, is well regarded by high-ranking military sports. It is most likely to be recommended to tourists, who, for one reason or another, are interested in the games soldiers play. A 110,000-acre reservation located astride the Kentucky-Tennessee border, 50 miles north of Nashville, Fort Campbell was built in the 1940s. It can accommodate up to 30,000 men, but its current population is no more than about half that, a mixed bag of basic trainees and permanent units.
There are probably no cities of 30,000, no schools and very few other military installations where games are so playable as they are at Campbell. There is a football stadium (since AR 28-52 rather a lonely place); an all-weather running track; two gymnasiums with the normal complement of hoops, parallel bars, dumbbells, handball courts; 36 bowling alleys; 26 ball diamonds; 12 tennis courts; five swimming pools; recreational (as opposed to vocational) target ranges; an 18-hole golf course; horseshoe courts; and innumerable Ping-Pong tables. Altogether it is calculated that about 125,000 games of something are played by somebody every month at Fort Campbell.
The recreational pi√®ce de résistance of the fort, a feature which reportedly makes Campbell famous among Army posts, is its Rod and Gun Club, located in a sylvan corner of the reservation. There a man and/or his family can stable his horse, kennel his dog, hunt for stocked quail, fish for trout, pursue a coon, shoot skeet, take his scout troop for a camp-out, barbecue his ox or just relax and sit around the clubhouse and tell hunting stories, fishing stories or barbecue stories, while refreshing himself at a nominal cost. Very nice indeed.
There is, however, a forlorn, remembrance-of-things-past air about Campbell, something like that which hangs over the football fields of Georgetown or Fordham. Partly it is that Campbell is temporarily underpopulated and, while the remaining soldiers seem normally playful, there are more games to be played and places to play them than there are players. Also, there is considerable nostalgia for the good old days of the 101st Airborne, the famous sporting division that was permanently based at Campbell until it moved out earlier this year.
"The 101st was fantastic," says Captain Tom Barton, now Campbell's Special Service officer. "They had the jockstrap image. They played everything and played everything for blood. At night they'd jump out windows just to prove nothing could hurt an airborne man. Very gung-ho," says Barton a little condescendingly.
"You can say that again," says, with admiration and enthusiasm, Elmer Blair, a retired major, who is now the civilian sports director of Campbell. "When we had the 101st we had ourselves a sports program. Year in, year out, we had one of the best football teams in the whole military, and, believe me, we could have given some pretty good college teams a scrap. Same with basketball, baseball, boxing, you name it. Those airborne boys come to play. And you talk about morale, Spree Decor, they had it. There was one bunch, the Umpty-Umph Battalion, they worked out some sort of deal with the sergeant major in personnel. A new man came along who could play some, you could bet a penny he was going to the Umpty-Umph. They were slick."
"What Elmer means," says an attending PIO lieut. colonel, a military flack, one whose mission it is to make sure that everyone understands what everyone else means, "is that is how things used to be."
As Captain Barton is at Campbell, a Special Service officer is in charge of the recreational ball of wax at most Army installations, with command not only of the sports program, but of craft shops, little theaters, art classes and other diverse entertainments. The sports director is usually a civilian recreation man, frequently an ex-officer, as is Elmer Blair. The Special Services staff, which at Campbell numbers about 65 civilian and military employees, buys and maintains equipment and facilities; draws up schedules, finds instructors, coaches, referees and umpires; arbitrates interunit beefs;-awards trophies; and in general provides everything for games but the participating bodies.
Although the Special Services domain is a fairly large, complex one, the Special Services officer, whose duties approximate those of a park commissioner in a medium-sized city, is usually well down on the military totem pole, being generally a lieutenant or captain, an ROTC, short-termer type.
"This is not something we like, and I wouldn't want to be quoted directly," a Pentagon man said one day, "but one of the problems of the sports operation is getting and keeping good officers. A hotshot, a career man, doesn't want to get stuck very long handing out soft-balls. He wants to get himself a unit, get a gun, get over to Nam where he can do himself some good."
Captain Barton, the Fort Campbell Special Services officer, is probably a case in point though the Pentagon man was not referring to him specifically. Barton, a recent Yale graduate, who was once a shotputter for the Old Blue, seems to be a good man in most ways, but he would never be mistaken for a military hotshot. He is a very large, bulky youth, faintly disheveled in his appearance, who has trouble remembering to wear his hat and who is made uncomfortable whenever an eager enlisted man salutes. "I am a natural, instinctive civilian," Captain Barton explains. "And in a few months I am going to be what I was intended to be."
Off his performance at Campbell, Barton would obviously make a thoughtful, progressive city parks commissioner. He is full of enthusiasm, and he has ideas about the significance and social value of his present job. They are not, however, conventional military enthusiasms and ideas. For example, at the moment he is badgering colonels about building a semiwilderness campground on a TVA lake just beyond the unoccupied boondocks of Campbell. "I'd like to put in a few cabins, some stoves, make a beach where people could go for a weekend, get away from all this military stuff for a few days."
Or take the matter of the Fort C mp-bell golf course, a pleasant, lush layout. "They're always bugging me at the Officers' Club about jazzing up the golf course. I can't see it. Last month about 2,500 rounds were played out there, only 700 by enlisted men. If participation is the big deal, I figure there are better places to spend our money than on the golf course." This is, of course, how a Yaleman, a progressive park commissioner would figure, but not how a military hotshot who wanted to do himself some good would view the situation.
Elmer Blair, who directly oversees the Campbell sports program, is technically a civilian but he is a more traditional military type than Barton. "I guess times change," the Campbell AD says, smiling wanly, "but it seems to me what I'd call the good old American games are losing out, like football, baseball, basketball, boxing. Like that boxing team working out here now. You know they got only one heavyweight. One heavyweight out of the whole Army. That's not the way it used to be. Somebody, somewhere, would have turned out a few big boys for them."
"What Elmer means," says the flack light colonel, "is that there is a lot of emphasis on participation at all levels now."
"Colonel, I couldn't agree more about that participation stuff," protests Blair. "I've been in sports all my life, and I'd like to see every boy out playing something. But I'm just not sure that cutting off the top helps the bottom. I know it was easier to get touch-football leagues going when we had a good football team here at the fort than it is now. The big team drew crowds, got people really interested."
"Before my time, Elmer, but so far as I'm concerned there's plenty of interest in sports left," and the PIO colonel begins a diversional story. "You know that general I was playing tennis with this summer? He'd call up a couple times a week, want a game. I like tennis fine, but some days I'd be up to my elbows in work. I tried to back out—just once—and he shot me down fast. He said if a man couldn't find an hour or so a day for recreation and exercise, he figured the man's job was too much for him. So I went out and played tennis with him and came back at night to clean up my desk."
Though it was perhaps not intended that way, the colonel's anecdote was illustrative of a curious phenomenon—the higher you go in the military hierarchy, the hotter they are for games, and the lower you descend, the closer you get to playing fields, the cooler they seem to become. "Wherever I have commanded," says Major General K. L. Reaves, who commanded Fort Campbell at this time, "I have encouraged the sports program. It is an excellent outlet for the men, so long as it does not interfere with the primary military mission of a man or a unit."
"Unless we are really in a bind we release everyone but a skeleton staff to take part in athletics on Wednesday afternoon," says Colonel Joe McDade, who commands the 68th Maintenance Battalion at Fort Campbell. "I expect everyone to take part—play Softball, bowl, swim, jog, I don't much care what. I tell my company commanders that in the long run this improves the efficiency of every unit. It gives the men something to look forward to, a break in routine, a chance to relax, let off some steam."
The main gate of Fort Campbell fronts on highway 41A. For some miles up and down route 41A there is a string of commercial establishments whose advertised desire it is to provide Fort Campbell soldiers with recreation on Wednesday afternoon or almost any other time. "It is a point of view," said Colonel McDade about the recreational attractions of route 41 A, "but my point of view is that from the standpoint of military efficiency, athletics are a superior type of recreation. Therefore my men are expected to play games on Wednesday afternoons, not drink beer."
The 68th Battalion office is filled with athletic trophies won by Colonel McDade's men. He and his unit have the reputation of currently being the best sports at Fort Campbell. "If everyone were like him, this job would be a cinch," says Elmer Blair, "but some of these people are pretty shortsighted. They don't see the overall value of sports. Sometimes they aren't very cooperative." At that particular moment, Blair had, among other worries, the problem of springing an enlisted man who did not serve in Colonel McDade's battalion to play in the Third Army Golf Championships.
As anyone who knows anything about the military knows, it is very difficult for an outsider lacking espionage training to locate a shortsighted, uncooperative member of any given military command. Even if he is able to uncover a few such mavericks, it takes a particularly naive or unfeeling personality to expose them. Therefore, in this instance, those holding a worm's-eye view of Army sports shall be protected by anonymity.
"I was in an outfit like that once," a company commander said, having been told of Colonel McDade's Wednesday afternoon field days. "The old man wanted to win every trophy from Ping-Pong on up, but he didn't want to hear that you couldn't get your work done because you had so many guys playing Ping-Pong. You had to sort of play it by ear and decide whether he'd chew you out worse for losing a game or screwing up a detail. Either way, you got chewed."
"Jocks," said a first sergeant contemptuously. "I don't want any jocks. They're just empty spots on the duty roster. When they are around they never know which end is up and they make trouble. Some guy works his tail off all day and he draws the same pay as the jock that's been sitting around the swimming pool. It's bound to make trouble. Don't give me no jocks."
"I got nothing against sports," said a red-haired private. "I played basketball in high school, I'll play some when I get home, other sports too. But this Army stuff is for the birds. I mean it's O.K. you go out with some of the guys, shoot a few buckets on your own, get a workout, but this organized stuff. I mean like you play all the games they want you to play you're not going to have any time to yourself."
There are, of course, other points of view. Outside the Campbell sports office there is a tall, blond, tanned boy, shirtless, in shorts, lounging on the steps taking the afternoon sun. He was introduced by Elmer Blair as a former a Big Ten basketball star, who the winter before had been the mainstay of the Fort Campbell five, was expected to perform the same role during the coming season, and was then going to play for an ABA team that had drafted him. And until then—in the off season his military mission is? "Oh, I mess around, help Elmer," the tall young man said. "Right-now I mostly teach tennis to the officers' wives."
"I guess maybe you could say," said Captain Tom Barton, apparently feeling something needed to be said, "that in the old Army there were spots for just ordinary athletes. Now you've got to be a superjock to benefit much."
THREE ILLUSTRATIONS
MICHAEL RAMUS