Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 23 December 1936 — Page 20
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 23, 1936 THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES PAGE 19
\ JESSE OWENS CAN BEAT A HORSE, WILLIAMS INFORMED
F ight Expert Gives Writer Tip on Story
When Boxers Die Violent Deaths Credit Should Be Given, Belief.
BY JOE WILLIAMS Times Special Writer NEW YORK, Dec. 23. —Walking down Broa early this morning I found mvself shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Morty Forkins, who quali- | fies in our set by way of being an | old prize fight manager. “I am my way to Havana,” said Mn : You can neve: tell abodt these gentlemen who infest Broadway, or what their interests may be. And knowing by the newspapers that Cuba was in one
of its recurrent
A POiiti al up - Sh heavais, I susspected Mr, Williams Forkins might be headed that way for sinister purpose This seemed a logical conclusion when I recalled that Mr. Barney Gallant, who for decades has been accepted as a sort of unshaved symbol of Broadway, Greenwich Village and Where-Do-We-Go-From-Here? practically conducted the last Mexican revolution—or at least the next to the last—from the Astor bar. “I have no interest in politics,” Mr. Forkins hastily corrected. “I'm | on my wav to Cuba as a promoter. | If vou must know I'm the guy who is taking Jesse Owens down there to run against a race horse. We're getting ten grand. That's my interest.” Alwavs the sportsman, Mr. Forkins added that Owens would beat | the horse. . .. “We'll beat the horse to the turns and outrun him on the | straightaway ... Mr. Forkins said he didn't care whether the horse was a Man O° War or a goat . . “Our contract calls for us to start on the inside and the horse on the outside. We'll save a lot of ground | going around the turns. And that’s all we need to get home first. You know we can take those turns much quicker than a horse whether we are inside or outside.” Still Talks Like a Manager As you may have noted Mr. Forkins still talks like a prize fight manager, Everything to him is “we.” If he wanted to be honest | he would admit he doesn’t know any more about a man vs. horse contest than your little boy Elmer. Indeed, if it came right down to it, 1s it well might, he probably would bet on the horse as a matter of custom. And also, as a mater of custom, he probably would lose.
“But what I want to know,” in- |
sisted Mr. Forkins, “is why you didn't write something about Billy
Orr The BackBoarp
BY JOHN W. THOMPSON
New Timing Device, Invented by Beech Grove Basketball
Fan, Does Away With Doubt in Spectators’ Minds And Puts Much Heat on Timekeeper.
EVERAL days ago | made some fantastic statements concerning the sport of basketball. I don’t know why. But at the moment they seemed to crowd forward, almost ask for expression. I figured I might as well get them off my chest. So I unloaded a lot of stuff about how basketball shows might expand into glorified spectacles of entertainment in the next couple of decades.
Frankly, at the time I thought some of my ideas
were a little far-fetched. But, doggonit, now I'm not so sure but what I underestimated the whole thing. Just yesterday afternoon a fellow came into the office with a lot of pep and gusto and pulled up a chair. He started unreeling a great deal of technical material about timing motors, generation of electricity and how much strength it takes to stop an electron—or something along that line. » = ” n ” »
I seemed a bit thick to me. But he finally showed me a picture of what he was talking about and I grasped the idea right off. It's an electric, automatic, fool-proof timing device for basketball games which lets the entire spectator population know just how many seconds there are to go before the home team comes through and wins. The fellow, his name is F. B. Hall, is the front man for William Simpson, a Beech Grove basketball fan who invented the machine. I have a sneaking suspicion (although Mr. Hall didn’t admit it) that Mr. Simpson built this timing box so he wouldn't have to fret so
much himself. : This combined basketball timer and scorer is 43 inches high and
84 inches wide. It's big enough and plain enough for every one to see in a normal-sized gym. =» = = ” n n
N the center is a face like a clock, but with only one hand. Around the face, going in counter-clockwise direction are descending figures from eight to one, representing the number of minutes in a high school basketball quarter. Just over each number is a light. When the quarter starts the light over No. 8 goes on. The hand on the clock moves around over the 60 sections denoting seccnds, and as it passes over the last one the light goes on over No. 7. Get the idea? This way, it's easy to tell just what proportion of a minute, or number of minutes has been played whenever the referee calls time out. When this happens, the timekeeper, seated at a control board along the sidelines, pushes a switch and the clock stops on the gxact second when time was called. When the game starts again, he pushes the switch and the clock moves on. ' Pretty neat, isn't it? But here's the pay-off: When the last minute of the last quarter begins, the time-keeper pushes another button. As a result, at the end of the game a siren blasts forth.
s ” ” =" ” =
TTACHED at either end of the clock are small boxes, in which the scores of the home team and the visitors are automatically recorded. These are not new. The only drawback I can see to this intricate device is that it puts a lot of heat on the timekeeper. If he forgets the switch at any time-out, or at the end of any period, especially the last one, the crowd is going to be on him like a wet blanket. According to Mr. Hall, who has installed one of these boxes in the gyms at Warren Central, Southport and Beech Grove, the device is perfectly accurate. You can see it for yourself at the Ben DavisSouthport game tonight. Mr. Simpson and Mr. Hall applied to the government for 14 different patents on the time-scorer. They were granted but one. And it was not for what makes the thing run, but for what makes it stop. Which should be some sort of a milestone in the progress of science.
tory of the 1936 football season is a topsy-turvy tale of amazing vic- |
(lapsed before | 9-0, wiping clean the entire slate
|of major teams with perfect rec- | | November and smashed the Wild-
Son of Tigers’ Owner Is
Papke when he shot himself. That |
was a good story.
famous—Stanley Ketchel—was shot. That's a good dramatic story and vou wrote nothing about it.” The indictment was true. It also disclosed what most of us have suspected for a long time: That Mr. Forkins' first love is still his true love—the prize ring. It so happens that he managed a middleweight by the name of Eddie McGoorty, who came along a little while after Papke and Ketchel, and so it is not strange that he should be interested in the history of the middleweights. Victory for Home Generals No monuments were ever built to the fighting genius of McGoorty. He was just a good, game fellow with a fair sort of wallop a negative manner to make Les Darcy, the Australian. Darcy knocked him out in 15 rounds and as a consequence attracted national attention. The World War was on at the time. Darcy had a bright fistic future. He slipped away to America, then still a neutral country
You know what war time hysteria | is. A professional fighter who won't | The profes- |
fight is a slimy thing. sional militarists welcomed Darcy with brutal abuse. They hounded him from one town to another. Frightened, confused, helpless, the young man took ill, had no resistance and died in the South. Next to the imprisonment of Eugene Debs this was probably the most notable victory the stav-at-home generals scored during the war. But to get back to Papke and Ketchel. Mr. Forkins is right. There was a story in that, a tragic story. People still call Ketchele the greatest middleweight of all time. Papke was no more than a conscientious second rater, yet he knocked out Ketchel—knocked him out in his prime, too, in 12 rounds, as I remember.
Papke shot him- | self. and the man who made him |
He helped in |
Ry United Press DETROIT, Dec. 23.—Baseball’s midwinter ivory trading and hot stove hullabaloo this year has one of |its keenest students in 25-year-old Walter O. Briggs Jr, son of the Deiroit Tigers’ d%ner. “Spike,” as the older Briggs calls Lim, was the youngest major league | executive to mingle with the diamond tycoons at the recent major and minor league conferences. And | while not attending such sessions he [works in a private office at Navin Field as assistant secretary and as- | sistant treasurer of the Tigers. | Since “Spike” is an only son, it inay be a few years—possibly even rmonths—Dbefore his father turns over to him the reins of the club. The younger Briggs admitted he ad a lot to learn about baseball, and he wasted no time in getting down to business when his father installed him in office last March. After a full season of close contact with the Tigers’ problems, he joined the Navin Field delegation to the major league pow-wows this winter. Serves as Apprentice
“I'm just an apprentice now,” he | gino, Tampa, Fla, outpointed Eddie
jol4 interviewers, “but I'm learning ast.” If and when “Spike” falls heir to the “top job” with the Tigers, he | may become a rival in the baseball marts for the more expensive players that have gone to the “million | dollar” Boston Red Sox. Tom | Yawkey, Red Sox owner, has a | lumber fortune behind his club. Be- | hind Briggs and the Tigers is a for- | tune built upon automobile frames. Commenting on his first year in | “the majors,” the young man, a
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democratic and self-reliant individual, said he likes the idea of dealing with the public in the manner of a baseball executive. “Mickey Cochrane and Charley Navin do most of the heavy work,” he said. “But some of it will fall my way next season. I spent my first year as sort of an assistant to every one around the office and as contact man with the press. I sat in on every conference possible to learn something about diagnosing baseball playing ability. I have the business side of the organization pretty will in hand. And the workouts I took with the team on the field have given me some idea of baseball temperaments.” Young Briggs is an expert horseman, a steeple-chase and hunt rider . . . that is, he was until his wife “grounded” him. His hero is his father, who rose from a railroad clerk to head a vast industrial organization.
GUGGINO WINS BOUT
Times Special
NEW YORK, Dec. 23.—Carl Gug-
Zivac, Pittsburgh, in their eight-
round bout at the Coliseum here last night. Both battlers scaled 132
pounds.
Additional Sports on Page 20.
Football in 1936 Ends as | Huge Puzzle
| Little Santa Clara Team Only
Survivor Among Nation's Top-Notch Elevens.
BY GEORGE KIRKSEY United Press Staff Correspondent
NEW YORK, Dec. 23.—The his-
tories and shocking defeats, of blazing comebacks and bitter failures. | It was an utterly unpredictable year on the gridiron and at the end not | a sifigle major team was left unbeaten and untied. From early October until mid- |
| December, the gridiron great top- | (pled in an endless succession of | (upsets. Texas started the uphedv- |
al by tying Louisiana State on | Oct. 3 in Austin, 6-6. By late No-
vember only one team was left | | unbeaten and untied, little Santa Clara on the Pacific Coast.
And in mid-December
Santa | Clara's |
temple of triumph col- | Texas Christian, | i
ords. In between many other gridiron powers bowed to inspired teams.
Mighty Pitt Fell
Before the end of November the football fans were frantic. There was no way of feeling the pulse of a team from Saturday to Saturday. One week a team would be up, and the next down. Pittsburgh scuttied the highly touted Ohio State team, 6-0, and the critics began beating the drums for Pitt as the top contender for the national title. Then Duquesne smashed Pitt the next Saturday, 7-0. Duquesne then mounted the throne, but six days later the Dukes succumbed. to tiny West Virginia Wesleyan, 2-0. Then Pitt wrecked Notre Dame, 26-0. Mighty Minnesota, unbeaten in three years and with a winning streak of 21 straight games, crashed in the mud and rain at Evanston Oct. 31 before an inspired North-
western team, 6-0. The Gophers had previously beaten Washington,
1 hese Young
The cream of the gridiron crop among teams east of the Mississippi is scheduled to meet the Western all-star eleven on New Year's Day in San The Eastern team, shown above with
Francisco. their coaches, are as follows:
Left to right (front row), Clarence (Ace) Parker, Duke; Don Geyer, Steve Toth and Steve Reid, Northwestern; Nat Pierce, Fordham; Carl Ray and
Men Go West for New Year's Day
t
———
John Handrahan, Dartmouth; Ed Jankowski, Wisconsin; Merle Wendt, Ohio State, and Ken Nelson, Illinois. Rear: Coach Dick Hanley; Frank Murray, Penn; John Drake, Purdue; Bucky Bryan, Tulane; Charley Hamrick, Ohio State; Bud Svendsen, Minnesota; Fred Ritter, Princeton; Nestor Henrion, Carnegie Tech; Ken Relyea, Colgate; Ken Sandbach, Princeton; Ed Widseth, Minnesota; William Kurlish, Penn; Larry Kelley, Yale, and Coach Andy Kerr.
Joe Cambria ~ ToKeep Club
Agreement With Mayor Made by Albany Owner.
By United Press
ALBANY, Dec. 23.—Mayor John Boyd Thacher announced today that Joe Cambria, owner of the Albany International League baseball club, | had agreed to continue operating { the club. Thacher said that he, in turn, had pledged himself in a telephonic conversation to sell 2500 tickets for the opening 1937 game. There were these three stipulations, however, that Cambria: 1. Stop at once negotiations with the New York Giants for sale of the Albany Franchise. 2. Start to rebuild the team ime mediately. 3. If he decided to sell at any | other time, would notify Thacher 30 | days in advance to enable Albany | interests to make the purchase. | Cambria, the mayor said, agreed
which went on to win the Pacific | Minnesota, despite ils defeat by | State. Southeastern champions with | to the stipulations and said he would
Coast title.
Northwestern kept up the pace, | pions.
won the Big Ten title and came | down to its final game against Notre Dame with the national title in its grasp. The Irish, licked by Pitt and Navy, reached their peak in late
cats, 26-6. Alabama and L. S. U. Tied In the South, Louisiana State, after its tie with Texas, came through the remainder of a tough schedule without a blemish, and Alabama, after an early tie with Tennessee, won the rest of its games. Those two, L. S. U. and Alabama, were the only major teams to complete their regular schedules without a loss and both were tied. . Opinions varied over the strongest team in the land. Some favored
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