PROFESSIONALISM.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 13 November 1926, Page 13

PROFESSIONALISM.

big money to good men. Vincent Richards lias turned professional so that he can share m the gate money of big tennis, and other athletes all over the world are reported to be taking an increasingly keener interest in the money side. It is, therefore, interesting to look at the sums- which certain professional champions are saia to earn. Grantland Rice, of New York, tells the story in his own inimitable St ßaclc in the days of this older generation’s budding youth there was widespread interest m the rise to tor tune of Mr Horatio Alger’s heroes. Those Alger novels, showing, the reward of courtesy and honesty and application, were received by mature readers with some levity, since they were wont to say that such things could never happen in real life. Th. sceptics were willing to admit courtesy and integrity were sterling qualities which were duly rewarded, but not to the extent of transforming a bootblack into a banker. Suppose someone in those now distant days had written the story of Pete Latzo, Babe Ruth, Young Striblmg, Gene Saiazen or Paul Berlenbach? The levity would have been more than doubled, and yet the lift? stories of the men mentioned would have made Mr ' Alger s heroes struggle along some three or four laps behind. , , . Modern sport has produced a type ot real drama which ancient fiction would never have dared to approach. Take, for example, the story of Pete Latzo. Only a few years ago, four or fivePete Latzo was a young anthracite coal miner. He was a hard-working youngster of Slav descent, glad enough to descend below the surface of the earth and emerge at night with the ±e w dollars he had earned. 1 Young Latzo. like Mr Alger’s heroes, was also courteous, honest and hardworking. He went to church m Scranton Ph-. with his family, and was well liked bv such of the community as ha ran across. But he found no lurking millionaires waiting around to lift him from poverty to riches. Go. finding that he had a natural knack with his two hands, he soon exchanged the coal miner’s pick for a pair of boxing gloves and started out to see what would happen. \ few weeks ago I was m Scranton on the night that Pete Latzo met Mickey Walker, the welter-weight champion of the world, in a champion ship battle. They fought in a big armoury that was packed to the last square inch. , ' , . For Scranton had turned out, hardly expecting to see the young ex-miner win, but to hope that he would make ;i good showing, and to cheer him The leading citizens of the town were there —the mayor, and the members of the chamber of commerce, bankers and all the rest. When the serene-faced Latzo entered the ring the crowd -stood up to pay him tribute. Fortv minutes later the same crowd was howling, raving, roaring, tossing hats in the air. pounding backs, ami starting a jubilee as the announcer pointed to Latzo as the new welterweioht champion of the world. About twenty minutes after that demonstration the young man was passing up offers of 20,000 dollars for another forty minutes’ performance, knowing he could make more, with his title « St The bov from the mines at the age of twenty-two had not. only suddenly become world-famous and the most conspicuous figure in a large city, but -he had also reached the place where he could make from 50,000 dollars to 100.000 dollars in the course or the vear a salarv which few leading bankers would refuse without some thought. Micky Walker was no slouch champion, and that night he hammered away with all he had. but Latzo had mapped out his more than a year in advance, and by cool and crafty use of all he had. brains as well as mine-built brawn, he fought his way to victory.

A few years ago Gene .Sarazen was a stocky, black-haired pink-cheeked caddie operating in Westchester County, N.Y. There were no lurking millionaires to offer him riches,' so young Gene became a golf pro. In 1922, at the age of twenty-one- or twenty-two, he won the open golf championship of the United States, and after beating Walter Hagen in a 72-hole match his name went spinning around the world In addition to the fame he acquired, Sarazen the next year gathered in 30,000 dollars through the publicity he had received just' when he was about old enough to vote. Yes, says the cynic, he got that for one year —-but what happened afterward.

It has been four years since Sarazen won his championship. Now, at the age of twenty-six, married to an attractive young wife, he is making more than 20,000 dollars a year from his club at Fresh Meadow and his winter club at Gulf Park, Fla. In addition he is furnished a cottage and is free to range and roam.. There are many bankers who would trade jobs with Sarazen now, especially if they could also take over his golf game in the same exchange. He is saving money, living modestly, and at the age of thirty or thirty-five will have a good bit of money in the bank that Tom the Newsboy never dreamed of. Then there is Young Stribling of Macon, Ga. The Striblings were a family of acrobats, proficient, blit unknown to fame and fortune when Wil liam L., their oldest son, began to show signs of skill with his two hands. So they all turned in to see what he could do about it. Here again was romance that Mr Alger never quite approached, due to a nation-wide interest in sport. For at the age of twenty-one Young Stribling had fought and won more than 200 fights, had travelled more than 50,000 miles, and had accumulated about 300.000 dollars up to his bid for the light heavy-weight championship of the world.

It was nothing in his young life to fight before packed houses and to take down 8 for thirty minutes ’ work 10,000 or 12,00 dollars when lie was on his way up. He had great skill, speed of hand, foot and brain and more experience at twenty-one than* most champions ever know at thirty. At the age of twenty he had fought back and forth from one ocean to another —from Canada to Florida. No one could have blamed Mr Alger twenty-five or thirty years ago for refusing a Stribling plot. For James J Corbett and 'Bob Fitzsimmons then were lighting for the heavy-weight championship and receiving just about enough to reach home and pay off the help. And suppose Mr)Alger had taken for his hero a young orphan located in one uf the higher grade industrial schools. And suppose twenty-five or thirty years ago he had had this youngster suddenly turn into a home-run hero, getting 50,000 dollars a year and drawbig in a million dollars through the turnstiles? Suppose he had had crowds of 40.000 and 50.000 tearing a welkin apart as his hero hoisted a baseball out of the park confines into an adjoining lot. His readers would have spoken about as follows: ‘i‘We can stand for Toni the Newsboy getting rich and Jim the Bootblack acquiring wealth, but there must be a limit. This is entirely too much. It never could happen.” Red Grange is one. just 'trnp. of lmojiv examples. Here’s a student just about able to make his way through college, and before you can say J. Robinson 70,000 people are paying two dollars each to see him play, and he is filling three or four banks with his surplus gold After which the movies grab him, a football league embracing eight big cities is built around him. and the hullabaloo covers 8,000,000 square miles of territory. \ There are plots in sport to-day that even the romantic Mr Alger could never have touched. They were bevond the imagination of a day that a lot of us still recall wondering at times., perhaps, if it belonged to another world and another life.