Slants on Sports

Leach Cross, the famous lightweight of a bygone day, ran up a string of victories before retiring in 1916…. Considered the leading lightweight of his time, he failed to win the title…. He’s now a dentist in Brooklyn, but still keeps in touch with the fight game…. Solly Schiff, the Tiger of the Table Tennis Tournaments, is the ping pong champion for 1935…. He won the title for the second time in two years…. Gabriel Hellman is the chess champion of the Bronx…. Benny Friedman, of City College, lost fifteen pounds during the football season, dropping from 180 to 165…. He says the Manhattan game cost him most of it…. In an effort to get his injured leg into shape, Rabbit Maranville attends three dances a week…. In a short time the forty-five year old baseball player has mastered the tango and the rhumba…. The University of Washington has the most amazing college wrestler in the world…. His name is Bill Dent, an outstanding heavyweight performer who is totally blind…. Statistics reveal that night baseball actually reduces the number of errors…. Al Schacht, the new coach of the Boston Red Sox, cracks a snappy whip and the young infielders don’t easily forget his cracks…. “Well,” argued a novice once. “I made that play because I thought I had a chance to get him.” … “Listen,” boomed Al, the old Hebrew war horse, “The Cub slogan years ago was Tinkers to Evers to Chance—but we leave nothing to chance.” … Eddie Seigal competes for a Swedish track club…. Milt Sandler runs for a German club… The two are considered the best Jewish track men in the country…. Seigal and Sandler, Phil Cohen, Sid Bernstein, and Harry Hoffman, the cream of the Jewish sprinters, have been invited to compete in the Knights of Columbus Casey track meet next month…. Sandler is entered in the famous “Casey 600.”…. ?

HAVE YOU HEARD THAT …

One of the shiftiest men on the C.C.N.Y. basketball team is Danny Banks, cousin of the famous Dave Banks…. Danny is handicapped by size…. He is only five feet two inches…. Hockey disks batted into the crowd at the Garden are very seldom tossed back…. Last year, the referees made a special effort to retrieve them…. This year they figure it’s no use…. Max Baer thinks Max Schmeling the most logical contender for the crown…. George Goldsmith, shooting from seven different angles—each one more difficult than the other—sank thirteen consecutive baskets at the first annual basketball shoot sponsored by the Y…. Max Baer says he will retire in 1936…. Miss Dorothy Andrus has dethroned Baroness Maud Levi, the Jewish tennis star, as the ranking player in the East…. Art Lasky has signed to meet Primo Carnera…. Da Preem has been pushing over set-ups in a South American tour…. Buddy Baer has been setting up pushovers in a North American tour…. ?

MAXIE BAER IN LIMELIGHT

Maxie Baer figures the beak-busting business so bad that he wants to put on heavyweight boxing shows at bargain rates. We’ve mentioned before in these columns that the champ means business when he says, “I want to fight Hamas and Lasky in one night.” Well, of course, one can gather from Maxie’s suggestion that he take on these two fisti-cuffers five minutes apart gives some idea of the high regard in which he holds them…. But the butterfly butcher boy’s manager confessed to your sports reporter that Maxie’s idea was nothing more than “a resin rummage sale.”

Maxie has earned $300,000 in five years and all he owes is a flock of attorney fees. But here is where Maxie remembers June Knight, Jean Harlow, and James Jean Johnston. “Something has to be done to keep my managers out of the breadline and when you take a look at the present contenders you must admit that the situation is downright serious.

“Put two guys on the same card with me and the customers will have a run for their money. It may even convince Commissioner Brown that I’m not a bum,” said Maxie, who can spot our old pal Dizzy Dean a dictionary of synonyms any day, including Christmas, and beat the Cardinal chatterbox from here to Livermore by three jumps.

MACCABI MOVES …

At the next Maccabiad the foundation stone of the Kfar Hamaccabi (village of the Maccabis) will be laid…. A swimming pool is being built in Haifa in time for the Maccabiad with room for 3,800 spectators…. The Hakoah wrestling team of Vienna, which will probably compete at the Maccabiad, is composed of seven men who have been champions of Austrian wrestling for a total of nineteen times…. Daniel J. Ferris, secretary of the A.A.U., has accepted the invitation to be present at the 1935 Maccabiad…. Hank Greenberg, baseball advisor to the U. S. Maccabi and member of the sports advisory board, will tour the New England country next week, speaking for the Maccabi.

In the international ping-pong match between Poland and Germany, recently held in Danzig, the victorious Polish team was composed entirely of Jewish players. The score was seven to two…. Max Orgler, German Maccabi member, is considered the best middle distance man in that country….