Slants on Sports

Judge Emil Fuchs, owner of the Boston Braves, is one of the most colorful men in the game today. His sole interest lies in baseball and although he hasn’t a chewing gum factory or a beer plant with which to subsidize his players, he has put baseball in the Bean City back on a paying basis. He had to because it’s his only source of revenue these days.

The Judge has been able to take the ups and downs of big league ownership with his proverbial sense of humor. In referring to the “grand old game in the good old baseball days,” he said, “it’s funny how baseball has changed since Rube Waddell’s time. In those days they had to get the players out of hock. Now they have to get the owners out of hock.”

VERY SENTIMENTAL

Fuchs is by far the most sentimental man in the game today. Perhaps it is due to the fact that he’s been in it for such a long time. However, on the back of the Annie Oakley’s that are issued for the Brave’s ball park this year are pictures of Maranville, Gowdy and Evers, with the printed legend underneath “1914-1934 And Still Together.”

The broken leg that Rabbit Maranville suffered while training down in the southlands hurt no man more than it did the Judge.

The Rabbit was an idol of the present owner and he realized that such a severe injury at this stage of the game meant curtains for the old-timer.

BROKE INTO BIG LEAGUE IN 1922

This Jewish fan, because at heart he’ll always remain a baseball fan first and last, and desires to be known as a rooter rather than as an owner, has had a varied career. His ambition as a kid on the east side of New York was to be a ball player. However, he didn’t have the natural ability to get any further than a catcher’s post for the semi-pro outfits around the gashouses. Despite this, his first love continued to flicker in his sentimental soul.

Like many other youngsters of the nineties in New York who played in the shadow of the bridges and the gashouses, Fuchs turned to the law profession and had a most successful career. His Jewish perspicacity accounted for the fact that he rarely lost a case before a jury. He served as a public official for a while, rising to the Magistrate’s bench of the Criminal Courts in 1916.

In 1922 he purchased the Boston Braves from George Washington Grant and brought Christy Mathewson out of retirement to become president. The fact that Fuchs was a New Yorker and used a former Giants man as an executive, was too much for Boston rooters. The bleacherites harbored a resentment against the Judge for many years and this dislike still persists in the form of rumors that the Giants own or control the Boston Braves.

ON ROAD TO SUCCESS

However, Fuchs was not a New York politician for the love of it. He had been schooled in the old Tammany regime of Murphy and though he didn’t kiss every baby in town, he attended one dinner after another. On one occasion he even attended a tea with the high caste of Boston society present. This in itself can show how much the Judge wanted to put his team across.

Despite the fact that the Bostonians were as thrilled by the Judge’s purchase of the Braves as nudists by strip poker, they finally came around to his way of thinking. Last year when Fuchs needed plenty of money to keep control of his ball club the fans in the Hub City came across with 150 grand. There aren’t many like the Judge left in this grand old game.

THE INDIANAPOLIS SPEED CLASSIC

Today at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway the annual racing classic will get under way to another flying start. For years this sport has attracted thousands of speed enthusiasts to the Indiana oval and it is one of the most thrilling sporting spectacles in the speed galaxy.

Annually this race takes its toll in human lives. There is no sport so replete with thrills, dangers, and suspense as auto racing wherein death lurks on the swerve of every wheel on the sharp banks or in a sickening skid around a turn at a dizzy pace.

Already a flash from the Indianapolis track states that Pete Kreis, of Knoxville, Tenn., veteran race driver, and his mechanic, Bob Hahn, of Chino, Calif., were killed when their car skidded on the speedway and left the track.

The Kreis car was warming up when the accident occurred probably zooming along at a mere eighty miles an hour. The car leaped the wall, hung for an instant, and then went over crashing into a tree. The career of another racing driver comes to a tragic close as the crowd roars.

TRYING TO REPEAT

Tommy Milton and Lou Meyer were the only two drivers ever to have won the 500 motor classic twice. Meyer will try for his third triumph today.

An average speed of 100 miles an hour will be required to qualify for the final and gruelling test. The race usually requires over five and one half hours for its completion and the huge crowd sits through the roar and drone of the motors ever expecting the narrow escapes from death, or the peculiar thrill that it may get when a car swerves over on its side throwing the occupants of the car to an inevitable fate, or watching the speed machines leap crazily over a wall. And the crowd roars.

Of course the men who risk their necks in this sport are in it partly for the money that may be theirs, but chiefly for the thrill of the feel of the wheel when the speedometer needle is pointing to 100 miles and climbing.

WOMEN’S SWIMMING ASSOCIATION

Many well known national and metropolitan champions will appear in the events today at Manhattan Beach. Among the women swimming stars who will be seen on the six event program are Lisa Lindstrom and Dorothea Dickinson, Olympic team members; Erna and Elizabeth Kompa, Ann Nertich, Jessie Conway, Susan Robertson, Janice Lifson, Elizabeth Harrison and Margaret Burn.

However, a group of girl swimmers from the W. S. A. under thirteen years of age will compete in a special 100 yard free style race in the opening event today at Manhattan Beach. They are expected to give their older sisters plenty of competition in record making.

METROPOLITAN ASSOCIATION A. A. U. TRACK MEET

Over three hundred entries have been received for the junior championships to be held this afternoon at Ulmer Park. Leading clubs in the metropolitan district have entered their full team. New York University is also entered.

Many Jewish athletes have been entered in this meet, held under the auspices of the Scottish Clans, notably Eisenberg, Shaftell, Grossman, Juliber, Finklestein, Aronauer, and Post.