The Red Smith Reader

by Dave Anderson

  At least one member of the party had a sleepless night and admitted it next morning, shamefaced, because it does seem childish to get so keyed up on the eve of a day in a trout stream. Always happens, though.

  The young man and Mr. Hackle had slept soundly and they set a punishing pace on the mile-and-a-half hike into the water formerly held by Mr. Ed Hewitt. This is open water now, soon to be converted from river to lake when a dam, in construction, creates a new reservoir so that New Yorkers may have water to emasculate their Scotch. It is beautiful water that comes boiling down out of the great, greenish Camp Pool through a long, rocky run; it was still perfectly clear after a night of rain and, said Mr. Hackle, who knows the river, it was low.

  Mr. Hackle set one of his company to floating a dry fly into the broken water at the head of the run. The fly was a big White Wulff, and as it rode the wavelets tiny brook trout slapped at it impudently. They came to no harm. Perhaps they only flicked it with their tails, not actually trying to bite the fly. Or maybe they took sample nibbles, said “Pfui,” and spat at leisure, properly confident that the dope holding the rod couldn’t get his reflexes working in time to sink the barb into their sassy faces.

  Meanwhile Sparse had tied a wet fly to the young man’s leader and led him to the middle of the run and watched as the first cast was made. The first cast took a fish. Details can be distasteful. If it was a very young and very small and very inexperienced fish, there is no point in mentioning that. The young man was young and inexperienced, too.

  The point is, the young man made one cast and got a rise and set the hook and got the trout home and then sent him about his business with a sore lip and, presumably, greater wisdom than he had possessed before.

  Mr. Hackle, who realizes that the great teacher is the one who knows when to let well enough alone, retired to the tail of the run, where he caught and released a couple of juveniles. His pair and the young man’s singleton were the only fish hooked that day. That didn’t matter; there’d be another chance the next day.

  “It’s sure got it over bass fishing,” the young man said. When he was reminded that he had drawn blood on the first cast of his life, he had the grace to smile in deprecation of the size of his catch. He did not remark that there was, really, nothing difficult about this game.

  When it was mentioned that he was the only member of his family to catch a trout in 1951, he laughed with pleasure and made no comment. No intelligible comment, anyway. He was down on all fours in a bramble patch at the moment and his mouth was full of wild raspberries.

  8.

  Offbeat

  THE STUDENT ATHLETE

  1979

  Some edifying words about student athletes were heard on the air over the weekend: Whenever a college football game is on radio or television, it is accompanied by edifying words about student athletes, about the importance of intercollegiate athletics in a rounded educational program and about the vital role played by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The edifying words are composed by writers for the N.C.A.A.

  Student athlete is a term susceptible to various definitions. It can mean a biochemistry major who participates in sports, or a Heisman Trophy candidate who is not necessarily a candidate for a bachelor’s degree. Some student athletes are more studious than athletic, and vice versa.

  There is at hand a piece written by a student athlete in his senior year at a major university that has been polishing young intellects for more than a century. He is an attractive young man, short months away from graduation, the best wide receiver in the school. One of his professors, who happens to be a football buff, asked him why his teammate, John Doe, never played first string although he was a better passer than Richard Spelvin, the starting quarterback. The young man said he would write the answer “like it was a quiz.”

  What follows is an exact copy of the young man’s answer. That is, it is exact except for the names. The quarterbacks are not really named John Doe and Richard Spelvin and the university’s athletic teams are not known as the Yankees.

  People (Some) feel that Doe did not have the ability to run the type of offense that the yankys ran. He also made some mistakes with the ball like fumbling.

  As a wide receiver it didn’t make me any different who quarterback. But I feel he has the best arm I ever saw or play with on a team. Only why I feel the I do about the quarterback position is because I am a receiver who came from J.C. out of state I caught a lot of pass over 80 and I did not care a damn thing but about 24 in one year.

  Spelvin is my best friend and quarterback at my J.C. school. Spelvin has an arm but when you don’t thrown lot of half the time I dont care who you are you will not peform as best you can. Spelvin can run, run the team and most of all he makes little mistakes.

  So since they didn’t pass Spelvin was our quarterback. But if we did pass I feel Spelvin still should of start but Doe should have play a lot. Tell you the truth the yanky’s in the pass two years had the best combintion of receivers in a season that they will ever have. More—ask to talk about politics alum Doe problems just before the season coaches hate?

  The last appears to be a suggestion that alumni politics may have played a part in the coaches’ decision on which quarterback would play first string. However, the professor who forwarded this material did so without comment or explanation.

  The importance of disguising the names of these student athletes and the identity of the university is obvious. It would be unforgivable to hold a kid up to public ridicule because his grip on a flying football was surer than his grasp of the mother tongue. He is only a victim. The culprit is the college, and the system.

  The young man’s prose makes it achingly clear how some institutions of learning use some athletes. Recruiters besiege a high school senior with bulging muscles and sloping neck who can run 40 yards in 4.3 seconds. The fact that he cannot read without facial contortions may be regrettable, but if his presence would help make a team a winner, then they want his body and are not deeply concerned about his mind.

  Some colleges recruit scholar athletes in the hope that the scholar can spare enough time from the classroom to help the team. Others recruit athletes and permit them to attend class if they can spare the time from the playing field. If the boy was unprepared for college when he arrived, he will be unqualified for a degree four years later, but some culture foundries give him a degree as final payment for his services.

  One widely accepted definition of the role of a college is “to prepare the student for life after he leaves the campus.” If the young man quoted above gets a job as wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers, then perhaps the university will have fulfilled its purpose. However, only a fraction of college players can make a living in the National Football League. Opportunities are even more limited for college basketball players, for pro basketball employs fewer players.

  Where outside of pro football can our wide receiver go? He can pump gas. He can drive a truck. He has seen his name in headlines, has heard crowds cheering him, has enjoyed the friendship and admiration of his peers and he has a diploma from a famous university. It is unconscionable.

  TEA’S A DAMNED FINE DRINK

  1939

  It seemed that a fellow living in a city surrounded by a Germantown Cricket Club, a Philadelphia Cricket Club, and a Merion Cricket Club ought to make it his business to know something about the great game that is not played at the Merion Cricket Club, the Philadelphia Cricket Club, and the Germantown Cricket Club.

  So this week we went out to Haverford College to see the all-star team from Chicago play Philadelphia’s General Electric cricketers, who, you doubtless will be pleased to know, are champions of the East. We were moderately pleased to know it until we saw the Chicagos polish off the Electrics with an ease that suggested being champions of the East was something like winning the first-half pennant in the Three-Eye League.

  This impression was strengthened when we asked how the cricketers more or less in action before us would co
mpare with the better teams in England. The inquiry brought well-bred shrugs which seemed to infer that none of these chaps could carry the bat of a player on one of England’s county teams.

  Still, it was possible, by watching closely and listening attentively to Mr. K. A. Auty and Mr. J. H. Grudgings, to gather sprigs of information about this delightfully desultory, ingratiatingly indolent sport.

  Mr. Auty is president of the Illinois and Chicago Cricket Associations and the United States Rugby Association, and Mr. Grudgings is president of the General Electric Cricket Club and when they were young in Loughboro, they used to go sparking with the same girls. But they never met until this week.

  Like Mr. Auty and Mr. Grudgings, practically everyone on the sidelines and all but one of the players were of English birth. The exception was O. R. Jones, the Electrics’ wicket-keeper, or stumper, or, to use a baseball analogy, catcher.

  As a matter of fact, Mr. Jones used to be a baseball catcher, and a lefthanded one at that, which possibly accounts for his taking up cricket. From old habit he wears only one glove, on his right hand, instead of one on each hand, as most stumpers do.

  Baseball analogies come readily to mind because, quoting Mr. Auty, who writes books about it, cricket is “polite baseball.” By polite he means nobody hurries very much and they take time out for tea and there’s no swearing at the umpires or fighting and players can stay in the game up to the ripe athletic age of seventy-odd.

  Indeed, players can reach a fairly ripe age in a single match, although the series of “friendlies” the Chicago club is playing in the East are piddling little one-inning matches played out practically like a flash in five or six hours.

  We hadn’t intended to bring up the matter of the tea, thinking the gentlemen might suspect us of sharing that slightly condescending attitude of many Americans toward the English fondness for the beverage. But Mr. Auty brought it up while talking about how tired a fellow gets playing all afternoon in the hot sun.

  “That’s why we drink tea,” he said. “It’s refreshing and invigorating and one shouldn’t take cold drinks when he’s all heated up. Tea, it’s a damned fine drink.”

  And sure enough, we had a dish between half-innings and it was good, although personally, as a health measure, we have always leaned toward bourbon and away from these fancy drinks.

  Well, anyway, cricket is played on a crease, which is a 66-foot strip of lush, smooth turf in the middle of a great big field. When the Merion and such creases were laid out, shiploads of special turf were brought from England. That’s why the local cricket clubs have such elegant lawn tennis courts; they used to be creases.

  Because the Haverford turf isn’t smooth enough, a long mat of coconut fiber just like a 60-foot doormat was used. At each end was a wicket, constructed of three slender sticks about 16 inches tall stuck insecurely into the earth with two smaller sticks, or bails, laid across the top.

  The batsman stands in a chalked-off space in front of the wicket, wielding a 28-inch flat bat of seasoned willow that costs 12 1/2 clamshells, or fish, as we say in England. He wears hobnailed boots of buckskin that cost about 35 smackers and whatever other clothes appeal to him, and tries to bat a hard cowhide-covered ball that costs three bucks and a half. Fearful of appearing crassly American, we didn’t find out the price of the shin protectors and gloves batsmen and stumpers wear.

  The bowler stands well back of the far wicket, takes a running start and delivers the ball with a stiff-armed, overhand motion, completing his delivery before his rear foot passes his wicket. He is not required to bounce the ball in front of the batsman but he almost always does because this enables him to bowl hooks; the English he puts on the ball takes effect on the bounce.

  If the batsman misses a strike and lets the ball knock down the wicket behind him he’s out. If his bat knocks the wicket over he’s out. If he hits a fly to a fielder he’s out. If he protects the wicket with his leg he’s out on a “leg before,” or 1. b. w. If he strides out of the batter’s box and doesn’t get back with a foot or the end of his bat before the stumper tags the wicket with the ball, he’s out.

  If a hit eludes the fielders, the batsman and the nonstriking batsman, who’ll be standing near the other wicket waiting for his turn with the shillelagh, race back and forth from wicket to wicket, scoring a run each time they exchange wickets.

  If a fielder throws the ball back and hits the wicket, or throws to the stumper who tags the wicket, before a batsman “makes his ground,” the batter’s out. Making his ground means getting safely to the batting box.

  Even with all these ways of retiring ‘em, it’s pretty hard to get a good batter out. That’s because he needn’t run except when he is sure it’s safe. The only time he can score runs without running is on the equivalent of a home run. If his hit rolls over the boundary of the field he gets four runs automatically; if it lands on or beyond the boundary he gets six. Or in case of an illegal delivery or a “wide,” a ball bowled beyond his reach, he gets one run automatically.

  There’s no such thing as a foul ball and the best hits, or shots, are those sliced adroitly past fielders in what would, in baseball, be foul territory. When a batsman comes up with a good one of these, the spectators call, “Nicely, nicely.”

  They say one of the slickest “bats” of all time was the Maharajajam-sahib of Nawanagar, better known as Prince Ranjitsinghi, or just Ranji for short. He used to squirt hits all the way to the boundary behind him, which is about like slapping a foul tip into the bleachers. Ranji could, and did, bat two double centuries in a single match on a single day (smack in 400 runs in a game) and 3,000 runs a season was an old story to him.

  When a sequence of eight balls has been bowled to one batsman that constitutes an “over,” the fielders shift positions and the other batsman is up. Maybe the same bowler will serve to him or maybe he’ll go into the outfield and some fielder will take a turn at bowling. There are likely to be as many as eight bowlers on a team, all playing the outfield when not bowling.

  “Bowling a maiden over,” means, no matter what you think, bowling a runless sequence of eight balls.

  We won’t go into the origin of the names of fielding positions. Suffice to say they’re called first slip, second slip, point, coverpoint, midoff, midon, long on, square leg, and such.

  Sometimes a batsman scores, say 50 runs, and decides to quit and give someone else a chance, even though he hasn’t been put out. “That,” Mr. Auty explained, soberly using a familiar expression, “is considered cricket.”

  Umpires never make decisions except on appeal. Should a batsman helpfully pick up the ball and return it to the bowler and a member of the team afield were to appeal to the umpire on the technicality that rules forbid a batsman touching the ball with his hands, the batsman would be out. But such a picayune appeal wouldn’t be cricket, sir.

  In the match we saw, one gentleman, who has varicose veins, asked for a pinch-runner. That didn’t mean he had to leave the game. He just had a teammate stand beside him and do his running for him.

  The gentlemen generally seemed just a wee bit disdainful of the talents of our professional ballplayers. Nevertheless it seemed to us a cove like Jimmy Foxx or Joe Medwick could, with a little practice, whip the socks off the ordinary cricketer.

  But then Arthur Brisbane’s gorilla probably could whip em all.

  RENDEZVOUS WITH DANGER

  INDIANAPOLIS, 1948

  A fat, jovial man is sitting on the tailboard of a small enclosed truck inside the first turn of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. His machine is four rows back from the rail, one among thousands and thousands of cars that stand, glittering under the sun, almost as far as the eye can see across this clamorous, hideous cauldron of noise and speed and reeking oil. On the truck’s floor is a bed of straw with tangled blankets and mussed pillows. The man says he and two friends—“three bachelors from Gary”—drove over yesterday and pulled up in line maybe half a mile outside the gate about eight o’clock last night.


  “How was the sleeping in here?”

  “Fine. We had a great time. Left the truck in line and went into town and drank coffee all night. The line started moving in at five this morning. Have a can of beer?”

  At his feet, a metal box holds beer cans in melting ice. He has a box of crackers open at his knees, a beer in his hand, and around him are paper parcels of food.

  “You’re pretty well stocked. Can you see the race from the truck top?”

  “Not so good. We were over by that gate awhile. Couldn’t see anything from there, either.”

  “Kind of a long drag, wasn’t it, waiting all night and not seeing much now?”

  “Yes, but it was worth it. Sure you won’t have a beer?”

  This particular area, where the infield crowds fight for position near the turn because the turns are the danger points in the annual five-hundred-mile race, offering the likeliest opportunity to see a man untidily killed, is an indescribable place, a grassy slum of gay squalor.

  Here a fat woman in halter and shorts sits sunning herself on a camp stool. There a girl in slacks lies sprawled in sleep beneath a truck. The car tops are cluttered like windowsills along the Third Avenue El, covered with mattresses and blankets and seat cushions and homemade platforms supporting boxes, chairs, folding stools.

  The car interiors have the homey, lived-in look of beds that haven’t been made up for three days. Some have blankets or newspapers hung over windows and windshield for protection from the sun and a smidgen of privacy. The men are virtually all coatless, for it’s a warmish day, and many are peeled to the waist. There’s one shaving in front of his rear-view mirror. When a luggage compartment is opened, it generally reveals a washtub of iced beer.