Slants on Sports

Barnett David Rasofsky, better known as Barney Ross, was twenty-five years old this week.

Born in the Ghetto, Barney has fought his way to riches, fame and championships. He was the first ring-man in pugilistic history to hold the lightweight, junior welterweight, and welterweight titles simultaneously.

In Barney’s twenty-fourth year he won and lost the welterweight championship, successfully defended the lightweight and junior welter titles and was one of fortune’s children. His ring earnings during the past year netted him over $100,000. Not bad for the son of a cloak-and-suit operator.

Barney has become the most admired, the most respected, and the most feared man for his inches in the boxing world today. Congratulations, Barney.

GARDEN GREETINGS

Barney is scheduled to meet Frankie Klick in Miami January 28. The Boxing Commission, through Bill Brown, said nix. “Barney must fight Lou Ambers or we’ll set up a new lightweight champion.”

Lou Ambers is the new pride of the Madison Square Garden Corporation. Could it be that the Garden and the State Boxing commish are working hand in hand?

Ross wants to fight as many lads as he can. He is willing to meet Lou Ambers immediately after the Klick scrap, to which the Garden again says “nix.”

The Garden doesn’t like Ross because Barney has time and again thumbed his nose at the august managers of that famous sports plant and gone off to fight elsewhere. Well, the Garden, through its subsidiary agency known as the State Boxing Commish, is hitting at Ross below the belt.

Bill Brown will be remembered as the man who saw Maxie Baer in training two days before the Carnera fight and said: “We must call this fight off. Maxie Baer is a bum.”

Bill Brown now says: “Barney Ross is trying to dupe the public. He fights guys whom the public doesn’t care for. He’ll have to fight Ambers or we’ll get a new champion.”

BUDDY BAER AND THE PUSHOVERS

Imagine a youth six feet four inches tall, weighing well over 230 pounds, possessing a pair of arms as brawny as a blacksmith’s and who can swing those arms as fast as you can say pushover. Do that and you’ll have the complete picture of Buddy Baer, sometimes known as Jacob, younger brother of the world’s heavyweight champion.

And it is with a feeling of apprehension that one scans Buddy Baer’s record and bookings for the immediate future.

There is no doubt that the younger and larger Baer’s activities gradually are revealing the 1934-35 membership of the Amalgamated Order of Resined Round Heels, yet to date the list does not include an old familiar name.

Personally, I’ll wait until I read it in the Police Gazette before I believe that the collapsible corps uncovered by Primo Carnera on his great American sucker tour of 1930-31 has vanished altogether. With several holdovers from the Dempsey era as a nucleus, Primo assembled the finest collection of fallers that ever rocked on their ###s at one time.

PUSHED OVER EIGHT TO DATE

The old crop of pushovers will be found jack-knifing, doing the swan and the one-and-a-half, before young Baer, ere Pop Hoffman decides that the baby Baer is ready for big-league set-ups.

Some five months ago Buddy hit a guy on the glove and he doubled up with cramps in the first round. Four months ago Buddy whisked his glove past the ear of another man mountain and the said mountain went down like a ton of lava.

MAXIE AND BUDDY ON SAME BILLS

Maxie has been passing off some affairs known to the Great American Public as exhibition fights in which Buddy usually appeared in a preliminary bout. Both have been making some easy money and their attitude is that of “who cares?”

But, there is no question that boxing has gone way back and the art of inhaling slag has disappeared along with feinting and knockout wallops. This was made very clear to your sports scribe after a Cleveland dispatch was received in the office the other night. Between the lines it appeared that young Baer put a lily in the hand of one McGoorty with a dirty look and a vicious swing to the shoulder blades.

As a faller, we recall, this McGoorty doesn’t even know how to get to one knee. At any rate McGoorty became number eight on Buddy’s rapidly-growing list of pushovers.

Primo Carnera is now pushing over set-ups on a South American tour. Buddy is setting up pushovers in a North American tour.

We’re still congratulating Barney Ross on his birthday.

TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS AND RATINGS FOR 1934

Seventy-two of the seventy-five tennis players seeking laurels in the junior championships saw action yesterday at the Seventh Regiment tennis courts. Of this number sixteen are Jewish. There is no other sporting event in the country which attracts so many athletes from different universities, colleges and schools.

Rankings for the men’s singles for 1934 placed three Jewish aces among the first twenty-five. Edward Feibleman, Leonard Hartman and David Geller rated eighth, ninth and twenty-fifth respectively.

In the women’s singles Baroness Maud Levi was the only Jewish tennis star represented among the first ten. The Baroness was second to Miss Dorothy Andrus, who was defeated by the former a year ago. Miss Andrus avenged her defeat at Forest Hills last September when she beat the Baroness.