Slants on Sports

Joe Jacobs, the Jewish manager of the former heavyweight champion of the world, Max Schmeling, was considered through a few weeks ago wherever boxing moguls gathered. It was felt that Joe had a white elephant on his hands that would not even net him carfare to Brooklyn. But Jacobs is a shrewd guy. He knows his fighters and he certainly knows Schmeling better than any pugilistic expert in the field. He realized that Herr Max was far from washed up when he lost his title two years ago.

He stuck with his fighter through the ups and downs of the latter’s boxing career and as a result now has a potential heavy-weight champion in the renovated and better German fighter.

When your sports scribe met Joe on the S.S. Manhattan yesterday before she steamed slowly up the harbor he was all smiles.

“I told you Max would do it,” he said. “I even called the fight and the style. The boys here wouldn’t believe me. In fact they even said I wouldn’t have the nerve to go across and see Schmeling take an awful licking from Walter Neusel. But, I told Johnston that Schmeling was a contender for the crown, and that he would tear Neusell to shreds. The fight told the story.

A JEW RIDES IN STYLE IN GERMAN STREETS

Not since Hitler was a pup have a Jew and a German ridden on the tonneau of an automobile through the streets of Hamburg as the recipients of a tremendous enthusiastic ovation.

The 100,000 boxing fans who plunked down 300,000 marks ($150,000 in American cash) on the line on August 26 in Hamburg to see this fight were all eager to shake the hands of the winner and his manager. Jacobs said that he never saw anything like it.

JACOBS’ STORY OF THE FIGHT

“I left for Germany on August 15 and arrived in Hamburg a few days before the fight,” continued Joe. “I realized that I would have to handle this situation very tactfully because I was the Jewish manager of a German boxer. Paul Domski, the Jewish manager of Walter Neusel, was not allowed at the fight because of his remarks against the Hitler regime made while he was here in March.”

“However, I also realized that if I sat in Schmeling’s corner I might set the fireworks off. What I did do was sit right near the ring and give my instructions to the trainer who in turn gave them right to Max. Incidentally, I was treated royally.”

“Schmeling entered the ring at 193 pounds. He weighed more in this fight than he did before and the added poundage did him a world of good. After the first round I knew that the fight was completely Schmeling’s. It was the best fight I have ever seen Maxie fight. He hit Neusel with everything but the Hitler salute. For the rest of the fight he simply tore the wild Walter into ribbons. The upshot was that Neusel couldn’t come out of his corner after the eleventh round.

PLANS FIGHTS FOR WINTER

“This thing means a lot to me,” said Joe, chewing on the ever-present Jacobs’ sigar, “it’ll show the boys around here that Jacobs isn’t gone.”

“Max has fought three times this year. He looked bad in the Hamas fight. But, he showed he wasn’t licked when he took it over Paulino. Now this guy Neusel is nobody’s pushover. He licked Levinsky and was given the nod over Loughran. He was good against Schmeling but Max just sailed in and called it quits when the referee said enuff. Right now I say that he will positively lick Maxie Baer (and would this corner relish the idea).

“If the boys in the Lasky-Hamas fracas look good we’ll probably fight the winner sometime in January.”

It seems to us that Jacobs will not have to cry, “We Wuz Robbed” anymore.

One thing that struck us in particular was this: As soon as Joe got off the boat he asked whether the tickets were on hand. Mushky Jackson, “commodore of the Lit-vack fleet,” answered, “You mean for the Ross-McLarnin fight?”

“No,” replied Joe, “for the Rosh Hashonah services.”

CROP OF JEWISH ‘RASSLERS’ NOT AFFECTED BY DROUGHT

The grunt and groan specialists and the heave and toss artists otherwise known as the guild of burpers and belchers have been doing their bone-crushing acts in every canvas-covered ring in the city. They come and go with names that would appall their own mothers.

For example, Isadore Belchovitz by the special process of grooming which horses in Jack Curley’s stable undergo emerges as Ivan Ivanovitch, the Terrible Russky from the Tsar’s crack troop of rasslers. However, most of the Jewish lads who remain in the ring for more than ten minutes at a stretch keep their own monikers. Nevertheless it is so stipulated in their contracts that catch new Jewish rassler will be known as the Jewish champion of all time.

Thus in the past few months we have had a string of grapplers known as the Jewish idol. Abie Coleman, one of the best belchers in the east; Sammy Stein, Dr. Fields, Eli Fischer, Abe Abramowitz, and Harry Friedman have all shared the spotlight for a while and then turned it over to the next guy whose contract specified that he was to be champ after a certain date.

Coleman and Stein are out West at the moment. Coleman realized that a change of air was the best thing in the world for him after he proved that he hadn’t the energy for a decent burp in the match with champion Jeem Londos.

Sammy Stein felt the call of Hollywood and took one of the fastest trains out there about a year ago. He appeared in the film, “The Lost Patrol,” and the reports of the critics convinced Sammy that he was a huge success as a wrestler.

FISCHER, FIELDS, FRIEDMAN HOLD FORT IN EAST

Eli Fischer, who sports one of the most beautiful cauliflowered ears in the rassling profession, has been coming along very, very nicely. He still has to burp seven times in succession to gain the right to meet Jim Browning. He graduated straight from dear old Rutchers into the arena in order to keep a date with his lady friend. He found the racket so lucrative that he intends to make it the family profession.

Doc Fields holds an M.D. degree but also finds that holding a guy’s head between his thighs at the same time he is turning his opponent’s toes backward is much more fun than holding the pulse of some alluring female.

Harry Friedman is still content to take five bucks a flop and he manages to make fifteen flops an evening whenever and wherever he is booked.

Sammy Stein was known as the Champion Jewish rassler in the East. After being bounced on his portside and tossed through the ropes on more than one occasion he decided that he should be champion of the West. After a few preliminary matches along Hollywood Boulevard he was slated for a crack at the crown by meeting Jim Londos, the Greek strumberry boy.

Our Pacific correspondent reached Sammy about forty-two minutes after Londos had tossed him. When Sammy came to all he could say was, “I seen my duty and I done it. That guy Londos didn’t throw me he only ruffled me.”

And so it goes, folks, you can take your burpers, and your grunt and groaners and trade them all in for so much siwash.

BASEBALL CONTEST HAS ONE WEEK TO RUN

With only one week left before the contest to select the greatest Jewish baseball player of all time comes to an end, the letters are pouring in thick and heavy.

Surprising as it may seem it is not Phil Weintraub or Moe Berg who are leading. Johnny Kling and Hank Greenberg are fighting it out for top honors. However, this does not mean anything. Letters are to be judged purely on their contents regardless of who is selected as the best Jewish baseball player.

You still have time to win a pair of the tickets that will be awarded the writers of the three best letters. These tickets are for the world series that will be played in New York.

Sam Delinsky, who won first prize in the last contest, attended the Ross-McLarnin fracas last night as the guest of the Jewish Daily Bulletin sports department. He said that he was very happy to have won and that the fourth row ringside tickets could not be improved upon. He also told us that he sent in his baseball letter during the first week of the contest.

Just one week to go folks and the contest will be over. Winners of the world series tickets will be announced in these columns on Wednesday September 19.

JEWISH-IRISH SOCCER GAME PROBABLE SELL-OUT

Tickets for the All-Star Jewish versus Irish soccer game to be played on September 16, at the Yankee Stadium for the benefit of Hope of Israel Center, Bronx, and the Catholic Boys Club of New York were placed on sale yesterday at all ticket agencies throughout the city. Colonel Jacob Ruppert has graciously donated the use of the Stadium for the game.

A capacity crowd is expected to be present when the ancient rivals, famed in song and story, face each other in the soccer arena. J. Henry Waldman, executive chairman, has secured the services of the greatest players of both races for their respective teams, and they are now in training for what promises to be one of the most thrilling sport spectacles ever seen in this city.

RISE UP, YOU SPORT READERS, AND PROTEST!

This is specially written for the sport readers of the Jewish Daily Bulletin who in an off moment turn to the Day Book and skim through its pages.

The author of that scintillating, sparkling, and genuinely pathetic feature on page six stated in his Wednesday column that readers of Slants on Sports are—for argument’s sake—intellectually several steps below readers of the day book.

Sport fans the nation over, shall we take this without a murmur, or even a burp? Are we men or mice that we have to take this with our backs to the wall? Let us rise up and inundate the writer of the Day Book with letters of protest. Slant on Sports will offer two ringside tickets to the Lasky-Hamas fight on September 27 to the writer who is most vitriolic in his statement concerning the Day Book author. (Nix, he doesn’t mean that.—Ed.)

FOOTBALL—HERE AND THERE

Football at City College is on the grand Friedman style. The boys on this year’s squad are in training at Tyler Hill, Pa. If training camp means anything, City College should have the best amateur football team in the country this season. In 1930, the last year that the Lavenders, now the Beavers, had such a thing as a training camp they produced one of the nation’s high scorers and the greatest team in C. C. N. Y. athletic history.

An interesting item that your sports scribe found in the files was the fact that the late Louis Wolheim, Jewish bad man of the screen, played in the back field of the Lavender team way back in 1898.

The N. Y. U. machine is once again training at Lake Sebago, Sloatsburgh, New York. We feel that the Violet juggernaut will be one of the most powerful elevens here in the East this fall and should come through in fine form.

WITH THE PRO BALL PLAYERS

Benny Friedman, who used to throw those spectacular sixty yard forward passes for touchdowns while on the Giants and the Dodgers, will no longer play professional football. However, there are still some All-American footballers left in the pro racket to make up for his loss.

Harry Newman, the brains and quarterback of the powerful 1932 Michigan eleven which swept on to the Big 10 conference title, will bark the signals for Steve Owen’s grid Giants this year. On the forward wall, Saul Melziner, now assistant coach to Benny Friedman at C. C. N. Y., and Babe Scheuer, star tackle of last year’s N. Y. U. eleven will clear the path for Newman’s dazzling broken field running.

Joe Rosentover, manager of the Passaic Reds, is convinced that his championship squad will once again sweep onward to another league championship.