Letters

NCAA Championship
Alexander Wolff deserves an honorary doctorate from North Carolina's school of journalism for his magnificent article about the Tar Heels' victory in the NCAA finals (Technical Knockout, April 12). Wolff not only gave us the facts of the win but also described why and how a coaching staff and an exemplary group of young men made it happen.
ED PLEASANTS
Winston-Salem, N.C.

I can't recall the last time I read an article on a national championship team so lacking in praise for the winner. No mention was made of how, in the moments before Chris Webber called the timeout that Michigan didn't have, North Carolina's Derrick Phelps and George Lynch trapped Webber in the corner, with his back to the basket and with no dribble and no one in sight to pass to. Nobody handed the Tar Heels the championship, they earned it.
JACK MAVERICK
Winston-Salem, N.C.

To assume that Chris Webber's timeout call cost Michigan the game is to assume the Wolverines would have scored in the time remaining. Also, if North Carolina had missed the ensuing free throws, Michigan still would have had a chance. Without Webber, Michigan was just another good college team. Michigan did not lose the game; North Carolina won it, so let's get off Chris Webber's back.
DICK RIPLEY
Centerville, Ohio

With all the hype about Webber's mistake, where were Michigan's guards when he was left all alone in the backcourt to bring the ball up for the potential tying or winning basket?
GEORGE ESTEP JR.
Bastrop, La.

Jerry Krause (Cont.)
We would like to correct some gross inaccuracies in your recent article on Jerry Krause (The Sleuth, March 15). We are all Jewish and we all attended Taft High when Krause was a student there. So for him to say he was the only Jewish student at Taft is an obvious fabrication. And the impression that Taft was a hotbed of anti-Semitism is ludicrous. In fact, in the late '50s Taft was considered one of the most progressive high schools in Chicago.

It is easy to use one's religion and ethnic background as an excuse for the way one is perceived and treated. Jerry Krause ought to look within.
STUART M. DUNN
MICHAEL C. MOLAY
SCOTT KALISH
Deerfield, Ill.

Anti-Semitism had very little to do with the harassment Jerry Krause took at Taft High and probably has little to do with the fact that he is disliked by the Bulls. I not only knew Jerry well, I was also on all the teams (baseball, basketball and football) at Taft that he hung around. As for his being the only Jewish student at Taft, he seems to have forgotten, among others, Neil Frumkin, center on the football team and one of the school's most popular students, and Barbara Bromberg, a well-liked cheerleader.

Further, his statement that "they burned out Jews" in Norwood Park is an absolute falsehood. I guess Krause thinks that everyone who knew him is either dead or suffering from amnesia.
LYNN I. TERRY
San Francisco

Band Aid
In your article covering the first week of the NCAA basketball tournament (Changing of the Guard, March 29), you quoted me as saying that the Southern band was the sixth-best in the Southwestern Athletic Conference. In fact, I had simply stated, "Five other bands in the conference are at least as good." Your quote reads as though I ranked our band behind those other five, and I did not.
MARINO CASEM
Athletic Director
Southern University
Baton Rouge

Opening Day Managers
Would you please identify the managers of the Boston Red Sox and the Washington Senators shown in the contents page photo of President Eisenhower throwing out the first ball in 1960 (April 12).
KENT CARDWELL
Austin, Texas

•The Boston manager is Billy Jurges, who quit as the Sox's skipper two months later when he suffered from nervous exhaustion, and the Washington manager is Cookie Lavagetto, who guided the Senators during their last four years in the capital but was fired a couple months into the 1961 season, the team's first as the Minnesota Twins.—ED.

PHOTO

JIM MAHAN

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