GRANDSTAND SPORTSMEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19842, 17 May 1927, Page 5

GRANDSTAND SPORTSMEN

AMERICA’S MIGHTY HOST 3 EED, ACTION AND THRILLS How Big Business Methods Have Been Applied to Professional Sport (By Kenneth W. Webb, in New York Times).

The American era of athletic spectacles is now upon us. One must make way for the new American sportsman straining forward excitedly on the edge of a hard seat that he has forgotten is hard. He has a hot dog in one hand and a cigar in the other, and ho knows little and cares less which ho happens to be consuming at the moment. All his attention is concentrated on one object—the next thrill of the spectacle put on for his benefit. It is obvious that a growing proportion of our city populations is rapidly being converted to a status which until now has not been very marked in America—that of the grandstand sportsman. We are unconsciously following the example of Rome in presenting athletic shows for everybody in the city who insists on being thus entertained. If you would know your neighbour to-day you must follow him to a big fight or a world’s scries or a college football game. His eyes brighten with the opening whistle and remain riveted throughout the play. All at once you find him up on his feet with arms stretched out to the arena. “Come/ on, Ba-a-bo,’’ he pleads. Or “Get in there, Jack boy, and clean up on that guy!’’ And it is not difficult to explain this sudden metamorphosis of a quiet American who otherwise spends must, of his waking hours trying to keep pace with business accounts during the day and with an ambitious wife at night. Man is still essentially an animal, and this sitting-in on a 11 battle” is one of his few opportunities to revert to type. It is true than on second inspection he does not appear to be a fear-inspiring creature. He has lost most of his hair; his breath is short, and he may even be soft and podgy. But, rest assured, the old instincts hang on. Ringside Participants. Of course you will object that lie is not in the game or fight himself. But in this you arc mistaken. The grandstand sportsman quite forgets that he will never carry the ball or run the mile again, and he shares the sensations of the athletes out there before him, swaying sympathetically with each mad sprint and unconsciously holding his breath at critical moments. It is hardly necessary to add that personal participation, in sport is much better than watching some one else do it for us, but the larger our cities become the more difficult also becomes personal participation in sport. And so the athlete spectacle has come in response to instinctive cravings that cannot otherwise be satisfied.

I Here enter the modern promoters of such spectacles. There are not many I businesses where customers fight their : way to the turnstiles waving green ; money and concerned only as to i whether they can get good seats —or any scats at all. And what other, commercial enterprise can approach our I sport organisations when it. comes to ' free advertising? Let us see what is being done to glorify the American athlete in and around New York. Most of our local universities, colleges and large schools have stadiums or fields that are al- ; ready inadequate to accommodate the j crowds that turn out to their big • games —most of which, in fact, are ! played in the professional ball parks. For professional sport we find stadiums and arenas that rival the old historic

amphitheatres both in construction and in popular use. To begin with, New York has three major league ball parks, which generally hold capacity crowds at baseball games through f hc spring and sum- ' mor and at football games in the fail. . Then there is the new Madison Square Garden —the largest and best equipped i indoor stadium in the world. To com- ■ plement this, Tex Rickard expects io • build an immense outdoor stadium, to ; be located probably on the west side | of the Hudson or in Long Island City, i A group of promoters is working on an : indoor stadium for Brooklyn.

j To these can be added minor boxing i clubs and armories, but none of them ' fills New York’s need for a large mu- • nicipal stadium. Until New York gets i such a structure she will never be ' equipped to receive such attractions as • the Olympic Games, the Interc.ollegi- ' at.es, the A.A.U. championships or large ■ pageants and exhibitions. Like Rome of Old. I For a true perspective New York’s ■ 'H’eat sport spectacles should be coin- ■ pared with the shows put on in the old ; Roman Coliseum. There are still i standing in fair condition throughout ! the southern part of Europe a score 1 of these old amphitheatres, which match very well the seoro of modern coliseums in America. For the closest physical resemblance to the Roman Coliseum New Yorkers must go up to the Yale Bowl at New Haven, but here ends any similarity; and so, to get our modern contrast to the Roman exhibitions, we can come right back to town, to Madison Square Garden. Here.we I find our hired gladiators putting on for the public as strong a sporting spectacle as our law and our Anglo-Saxon principles will permit. It is fortunate that the humane standards of our modem civilisation 1 do not permit a return to the slaugh- |; ter which featured the sport that was I' Rome’s. This may mean, however, that I we shall never achieve the glamour

that clings to those old days when they put on their shows in the grand style, with a royal disdain as to the consequent loss of capital and of human and animal life. Picture the rich drama inherent in one of those arena battles when two bands of trained gladiators fought each other to a finish with the full abandon that comes only with the knowledge that this is the last hour of life unless you manage to kill your antagonist. A Different Spirit. This fighting for self-preservation yielded quite different impulses from those that guide the modern gladiator, who can safely say to hiuisCif that in twenty minutes this particular job will be over, and he win be under a hot shower. The callousness of the promoters, however, is about the same in each case. It is a mere matter of business, and before the last spectator stroils out of Madison Square Garden into the night the stage hands wd. have smarted to tear down the boxing platform to get out the big saucer for the races of the following evening. Our managers are thus descendants under the skin of the old Romans, who dragged out the victims and set a clean s.age for the next show.

As in trrcece the Roman games na.l a semi-religious origin, and tne Munns Gladiatorium has been explained as a refinement of the older savage custom of slaughtering slaves or captives on the graves of warriors. Some of the races and games were spontaneous affairs, organised and carried out by the Romans themselves, but most of the lighting was assigned to gladiators drawn chiefly from prisoners of war or criminals condemned to death. Yet under Nero, Senators and even wellborn women appeared as combatants. At the Saturnalia, in 90 A.D., Domitian went so far to stage a battle royal between dwarfs and women. No less a person than Julius Caesar is credited with inventing the bull-fight, which quickly became the piece de resistance in many amphitheatres of Southern France and Spain. In final appreciation of these Roman spectacles it need hardly be added that the performers also became quite specialised. Lentulus trained his types of gladiators with the same care that John McGraw gives to the different departments of his baseball squad. Speed and Action. Coming back to the spectacles offered by our New York gladiators, we find that they feature two main qualities —the Roman quality of fight and the American quality of speed. Speed had iis place in the games of the Colosseum, but nothing like the importance we attach to it. On that element very largely are founded the most popular games in the Garden—boxing, hockey, track and bicycle racing. The sudden rise to favour of professional hockey is stimulating evidence in support of the proposition that this is the land of opportunity. l*ive years ago hockey meant little to any but a few New York sportsmen. Tex Rickard, however, saw that boxing and rac|ig were not going to keep his area busty. So he imported thirty husky lads from Canada and sent them out on his Garden rink under flashing red, white and blue jerseys. To-day they draw him an average crowd of 15,000 three times a week.

And what fine specimens of physical fitness are |.ese modern gladiators. As the favourite gladiators of old were Gauls, Saxons and Britons, so do those of to-day come from the provinces. The Rome of the New World attracts its gladiators not only from this country but from all the rest of the world as well. Of all ihe professional ball players who represent New York, the men born here can be counted on one hand, while the nearest approach to-an American among the hockey band is Billy Burch, who left Yonkers for Canada at the age of 4. One authority on the old Roman games is boid enough to assert that a successful gladiator enjoyed far greater fame than could any modern prizefighter or athlete, being favoured by prominent men and women alike. But Gene Tanney’s rapid rise to fame and favour should do much to qualify such an opinion. 1

These same fans arc also becomiug alarmed at the way the promoters are playing to society at fancy prices, while they are shoved up in the top gallery for the same money at whicn they used to get ringside seats. Of all the features of his new Garden, Tex Rickard is most pleased with the fact that the 288 members of his last creation —the Madison Square Garden Cluo —represent, according to his reckoning, the greatest total of wealth of any club in the world. When, the elab opened at the Delaney-Maloney fight the members and their guests, it was said, numbered more than 500 millionaires.

There are signs which indicate that these sporting spectacles are showing too little fight and too much business. Professional athletes are going through the motions without getting sufficiently ‘ ‘ steamed up ” to put sufficient battle into their game. Not only the managers but also the “battlers” themselves dislike to take chances that might jeopardize a profitable future, and so most of this winter’s fights have been of the cautious, pink tea variety.