Slants on Sports

New York University, with a record of twenty-seven straight victories, may be approaching its Waterloo. The Violet cage experts have turned back all their local opponents and several intersectional adversaries over a two-year period journey to Annapolis on Saturday to face Navy, and it is there that the impressive string of successive Violet victories may be severed.

Navy has been bowling over opposition with a gusto and nonchalance that are discouraging to its rivals. Last Saturday, Pittsburgh, the best passing machine in the East, and one of the strongest teams in the country, fell before the subtle and swift attack launched by the midshipmen. The Panthers used two full teams to s##p the talented quintet made up of Dornin, Borries, Ruge, Mandelkorn and Fellows, but failed. The final count saw the middies two points to the good—24-22.

Much of the success is due to the splendid teamwork of Buzz Borries, and Bob Mandelkorn. They have been playing together for three seasons and their passing is one of the features of the Navy attack. Mandelkorn is Jewish and starred at an end post on the 1934 Navy juggernaut that sank the Army last December in Philadelphia.

VIOLET PLAYERS HAVE HARD WEEK

Tonight the Violets, led by their ace captain Sid Gross, travel to New Haven to play Yale. Friday night the quintet hops down to Washington to meet Georgetown University on their home court and face Navy on Saturday. Of the three games Coach Cann considers the scrap with the middies the toughest.

If the Violet five, an all-Jewish aggregation, comes through this week’s program unscathed it is very likely that it will go through the season undefeated. Its last game with City College, February 27 at the Garden, should not prove very difficult for the Hall-of-Famers.

The talk which is going the rounds these days about a postseason basketball game between N.Y.U. and Duquesne depends very much on the fate of the three games the Heights lads are playing this week. Then again faculty approval for such a post-season game has not been forthcoming as readily as might be expected. Coach Cann, however, sees no sense in talking about post-season games at the present moment.

ADMITS HE IS NOT INVINCIBLE

One of our more fortunate friends who is basking in the Miami sunshine sent us an interesting anecdote on Maxie Baer, the champ of the heavyweights. We’re passing it on to you. Our pal, who occasionally works in Tony’s, the slick hair-cutting emporium in the forties, is now a master barber in Frank’s—just around the corner of the Miami boulevard.

“I work on chair number three,” says our shampoo specialist, “and this is Maxie Baer’s lucky number. When he came in to this place, he sat down in my chair immediately. No sooner did he plant himself than he starts talking about the one and only Maxie Baer. ‘A lot of people think I’m the hottest heavyweight who threw a right,’ said the champ. “Well, they ain’t right. I’ve been around twenty-five years, and I’ve met one guy who could get in a room with me, lock the door, turn out the light, and work his way out.

“‘The guy? Heck, the ol’ man Jack. The day he licked Willard I’d a been lucky to last a round with him. That’s not because I like Jack. It’s because he hits harder and can move and think faster than I can. But boy, I’d a liked a shot at him, what with all the dough he could pull in that gate. Say, what did he draw with Tunney?'”

“I told him about a million or so.”

“A million! Listen, I’d fight a room full of wild-cats, sailors, and Carneras for that.”

“I was shaving the champ,” continues our friend, “when the champ said that for a million he would have done the same thing to Gene Tunney that he did to Levinsky, Schmeling, and Carnera. Nevertheless, he says that the hardest smack in the jaw he ever got was a punch from Schmeling. Also, Schmeling rather than Art Lasky is the boy to watch. Art hasn’t got what is known as a heart—or the old moxie. He rates Hamas as tough.”

“Max won’t get married for a while yet. ‘I know many girls,’ he said. ‘Lovely girls. But I think I shall order a la carte for a while. Get me, kid?'”

HOCKEY HIGHLIGHTS

Despite the miraculous spurt by the New York Rangers which carried them from a cellar position to third place in the American division the Chicago Black Hawks and the Boston Bruins are still holding their own. The Hawks have acquired a Jewish defense man, Levinsky by name, and the Bruins have had Max Kaminsky all season.

“Jersey” Jones, one of the old guards of sport and the Garden nursery manager was lamenting Levinsky’s sale to the Hawks.

“I don’t know what was wrong with the kid,” he said. “He just wouldn’t play ball for us. He was afraid to smack into a guy, bump or check him. We’d have him here in the office for hours talking to him, telling him that all he had to do was play real hockey and what does Alex do? He lays down on the job. We had to sell him.”

“But here’s the payoff,” continued Jersey. “No sooner do we sell him than he begins to play the games as it should be played. The Hawks are very well satisfied with the deal because Alex has been knocking them dead, breaking up plays, and doing a little scoring on his own. The guy is good, but he just won’t play for the Rangers.”

ACES IN TENNIS

Millicent Hirsch, the queen of the girls’ division in national tennis play, has grown up and graduated to the ranks of women players. She will compete in her first women’s indoor meet this month in the 71st Regiment Armory. Her opponents will be tennis aces whom she has always admired. Milicent considers the Baroness Maud Levi the brainiest woman in tennis today. Baroness Levi wins by quick thinking and strategy whereas others like Helen Jacobs and Bonnie Miller are form specialists.

The Baroness, formerly Maud Rosenbaum, of Chicago, married the Baron Giacomo Levi, of Italy in 1928. He is an ardent tennis enthusiast and a good player in his own right. Baroness Levi attained her greatest success in 1933, although she is still the fifth ranking women tennis player in the country. In 1933 the Baroness won four major tournaments in as many weeks, a feat which had never been accomplished before in the history of tennis and which has never been equaled since.

Bonnie Miller, who, despite the fact that she is only twenty-two in national ranking, is Millicent Hirsch’s tennis idol. Bonnie is a Californian and a neighbor of Helen Moody. According to court experts, Bonnie is due for an excellent year in 1935.