Slants on Sports

Babe Scheuer has signed with the New York Giants football team. This should be good news to gridiron fans throughout the East, especially in the Metropolitan sector. Scheuer is a big man, a fast fellow, and a great player. Liked by everybody this genial, good-natured giant, Babe is still the same unassuming youngster who made the old club team in Brooklyn over ten years ago.

The Babe has been playing football ever since he can remember and has amassed more individual honors on the gridiron than some of the teams he has played with. He was a guard at James Madison in 1927, an all-scholastic halfback in 1928, and an all-State selection as quarterback in 1929. It was in that year that Babe’s wizardry at calling the plays resulted in the New York State football championship for James Madison High.

During the next four years Scheuer was the mainstay on the Violet front line and, as in high school, came out on top of the heap.

A BIG MAN FOR BIG TIME BALL

This Fall Babe will bolster the forward wall of Tim Mara’s championship eleven. Harry Newman and Ken Strong will find it much easier to get a first down on an off tackle slice this season, for it is at the ‘iron-man’ post where Babe, the mighty behemoth, will play. Another thing that is quite important, too, is that Scheuer will be flanked by the country’s best gridiron heroes.

Babe was a grand player in college. The sports writers in the city hinted at the fact. Only a slim minority actually saw the real ability in this young man’s aggressiveness, defensive play, and clean hard hitting. The apathy of the experts was a result of New York University’s team spirit and morale hitting all time records for lows. So apparent were the doldrums that the football team was becalmed in for the last two years that sports writers used to pass up the Violet and rate it in the same class with the Lavender of City. Accordingly the players on the teams failed to receive their proper share of the limelight and recognition that is due undergraduate grid stars.

THE BIG PAYOFF

Nevertheless Tim Mara’s football scouts saw what the sport writers and grid experts refused to see. They saw the All-American calibre of a man like Scheuer and the result is the Babe is signed on the dotted line. As in every other business you’re paid what you’re worth. The mere fact that Scheuer is playing for the Giants and not for some semi-pro outfit brings home the fact that he must be good. Incidentally, he received All-American honors at the end of the 1933 football season.

AN ALL-ROUND ATHLETE

Though still a youngster of twenty-one, the Babe has been around—athletically speaking. As a reward for his splendid shotput record he traveled with the N.Y.U. track and field team to Los Angeles and the Intercollegiate games during the summer of 1932. He has won his events on the fields of practically every large stadium and armory in the East.

Before concentrating on track and football in college, Scheuer played basketball and baseball and, in fact, was on the high school teams of all the sports mentioned. However, once having matriculated at the Heights he felt that two sports would be sufficient and as a result he proved a stellar track man and a crackerjack footballer.

Once again he proved his versatility on the gridiron. As we mentioned above he played guard, halfback and quarterback in high school. In college he played center on the frosh eleven in 1930 and tackle on the Varsity in 1931, 1932 and 1933. Scheuer can boot the pigskin straight down the green for sixty yards and this fact has been used to advantage by Violet coaches.

A GOOD STUDENT

Once in a while a Barry Wood crashes the front pages of the newspapers because he has made nine letters at old Harvard and received a Phi Beta Kappa key in trade. The rest of the time people like to think of footballers as dummies. Well, Babe was no Barry Wood, but at the same time he was nobody’s dummy. He majored in economics and knows what it’s all about. That’s more than can be said about many another graduate of N.Y.U.

We are happy about the fact that the Babe will play pro ball. We would like to see the familiar hulk waddle down the field and make the tackle after a punt. We would enjoy seeing him plant his body in front of the opposition and bowl them over like tenpins. We’d think it was old times if he should growl at an opponent and hit him with the force of a sledge hammer. Evidently Tim Mara feels the same about it as we do because Tim now has Scheuer on the dotted line.

WRESTLING WRANGLES

The other day we remarked that something was fluky in the rassling racket. Here’s one little item. George Hagen wrestled last night in the preliminary at the Fort Hamilton Post. He finished the bout in short order or was finished with the same alacrity, we can’t remember exactly which it was. But as soon as he was through he dressed, hailed a cab, and was driven to the Coliseum in time to appear against Rudy Dusek in the feature attraction. Well, nothing but the best for the suckers who pay their money and take their choice.