Slants on Sports

The second Maccabiad takes place 150 days, from now in Tel Aviv, Palestine… Final eliminations for berths on the Maccabi wrestling team will be held in the Bronx “Y” in February… Dave Smukler and Izzy Weinstock, named on the Jewish all-American first team, have been picked on every first and second all-American team named thus far by experts throughout the country… Maxie Baer will box for Jack Dempsey next June… not for the Garden… Joe Jacobs, fight manager, was arrested at the frontier in Spain on a tax-dodging charge… Al Friedman, once a familiar figure in the heavyweight ranks, was killed by a truck in Los Angeles… He was only twenty-nine years old… Max Baer’s “man” is a former valet to the Prince of Wales… Now you know where the heavyweight champ gets that taste for fancy raiment… At one time during the basketball game Saturday night between C. C. N. Y. and Brooklyn City there were ten Jewish court stars on the floor… Alex Levinsky, of the New York Rangers, first played hockey with Moore Park of Toronto City league in 1927… The present six-day bike race teams are an international galaxy of stars… The fifteen teams are made up of men who represent nineteen nations… The two Jewish riders are listed as Americans… Abi Feldman, who fought at the Garden Friday night, was a good baseball and football player at Schenectady High School some years ago…

HAVE YOU HEARD THAT…

Half of the City College football team was on hand last Thursday afternoon to watch Coach Benny Friedman in his comeback in pro football against the Giants… It looked like old times for the City College men because Benny’s team lost, 27—0… Water polo is the most gruelling of all sports… crew second, lacrosse third, and football a bad tenth on the list compiled by the Crown Medical Association… Millicent Hirsch thinks Baroness Levi the cleverest tennis player in the country… Marty Glickman, sprint champion of the city and a top-notch football player, has received scholarship offers from seven universities in the country to play football for them… The freshman team under Chick Meehan that entered N. Y. U. in 1929 was the last football bunch to receive free tuition, free meals, free lodging, and what were known as “jobs”… Siggy Wertman, one of the best dribblers in pro soccer today, has been released from the Brookhattan “1” because “of erratic shooting and poor assistance”… Nat Machlowitz won the 1934 award as the most valuable football player on this year’s team at New York University… His splendid defense work in the Fordham game last week was the outstanding football exhibition seen by this scribe in New York all season… Not one Jewish name appeared on the list of records compiled by the A. A. U. for recognition of athletic marks set since January, 1934… Following almost immediately on the wheels of the six-day grind the New York Pet, Poultry and Fish Show moves into the Garden —known as the Temple of Swat… More than eight Madison football players are slated for all-scholastic honors this season… Janice Lifson, one of the most attractive diving lassies in the East, competed in her first Winter season meet yesterday… She is equally adept at swimming but her coach, Charlotte Epstein, insists that she specialize in one event only…?

BASEBALL BUNTS

The other day your sports scribe met an old pal of his and the two immediately began reminiscing about the old days. We met Daniel, one of the foremost baseball authorities, at a sporting shindig and he began talking about Al Schacht, one of his favorite Hebrew baseball players.

“Al is known as the greatest clown in the game. His coaching on the sidelines seems to be only the merest complement of his mummery. Thousands of fans around the country think of Al not as a man useful in the inner sciences of baseball but only as a diamond masquerader.”

But according to Joe Cronin, Al is a crafty baseball man, an invaluable coach who can give signs when they are most needed, and who has a flair for stealing the wigwag stuff of the other side. That’s why this alleged clown is going to Boston along with Joe.

Says Cronin: “When I was traded to Boston the first move I made was to ask Clark Griffith to send Schacht with me. Al may look like nothing more than a funny guy and those thrill whistles of his may sound like so much noise to you, but he’s a handy man for a manager to have around. He knows things and he notices things.”

Thus the Duke of Walton avenue, The Bronx, becomes the gay flaneur of the Fenway, Boston.

Between the Celtic Cronin and the Hebraic Schacht there has developed a sort of “Abie’s Irish Rose” partnership which apparently was more important than generally supposed in the scheme of things in Washington.

Judge Emil Fuchs owns the Boston Braves. The Judge mixes in the best circles in the Bean City. South Boston at last has got itself an Irish manager for the Red Sox. The West End has landed a Jewish assistant. Now, if Cronin, Eddie Collins and Tom Yawkey can land Oscar Melillo to take care of the North End Italian vote, the baseball combination in the Hub will be complete and ideal.

THE SIX-DAY BIKE GRIND

Harold Ruth and Jerry Rodman, the Jewish bike riders on the Garden saucer these days, had a special dish of kosher turkey Thanksgiving when Promoter Campbell treated the thirty men to their Thanksgiving blowouts.

Ruth and Rodman promised your scribe that they would try and last the grind. They promised to beat the seventy-five hour stretch made by Louis Cohen and Bob Silver last March. At the end of the third day both riders gave up. Silver went back to his fish business and Cohen went elsewhere.

Guimbeterre and Brocardo, the French-Italian team, won the last New York six-day race and they rank as one of the favorite teams in the current free-wheeling spree. Alfred Lourner of France and Gerard DeBaets of Belgium, the “Red Devil” team who have won races in the last few months in Detroit, Philadelphia and Chicago, are the riders looked upon to give Brocardo and his mate their toughest battle. The old favorite of the pedal-pushing fans, Georgetti, is still in the bike business.

Rodman and Ruth will be doing well, according to the gambling fraternity, if they finish at all.

THE SPORTING CALENDAR COLISEUM—WRESTLING TONIGHT

Dave Levin is pitted against Tiger Flowers Johnstone in one of the double wrestling attractions to be presented at the Coliseum tonight. Maury LaChappelle tackles Dynamite Brown in the other feature finish spectacle. Jack Bloom-field, an up-and-coming Jewish youngster, is paired with Paddy Mack, Irish star.

The Coliseum this year is catering to the wishes of the wrestling fans and the belch and burpers presented at this bone-crushing plant are giving the grunt and groan guys a run for the# money.