Bert Whyte's oe |
- SPORTLIGHT.

At THOUGH most of the

Swash has gone out of my
buckle I still take an active
Interest in all sports — spec-

lator sports, preferably. My
Sacroiliac provides a wonder-
ful excuse for begging off
Chasing footballs, swinging
racquets, hurling bowling balls
down alleys, etc., “etce., ad
nauseum. A _ pitch - and - putt
Course is about my speed, a
Tace track finds me in my ele-
ment. Walking slowly to the
; mutuel Window for a two-buck
ticket gives me exactly the
amount of exercise I crave.

One sport I know nothing
about is pullfighting. This
hasn’t prevented me’ from
Writing on the subject, and
expressing my prejudices in
vigorous terms. (As Ambrose

lerce said: “A prejudice is a
Vagrant opinion without vis-

le means of support.”)

Looking over some old
Copies of the Toronto Daily
Clarion recently, I find that
following the death of Mano-
lete in 1947 I burst into print
with a condemnation of bull-
fighting, and .concluded that
it Was not a sport, but a de-
Stading spectacle.

Perhaps it’s time I took a
Second look. —

In Spain and Mexico, bull-
fighting jis the most popular
Spectator sport, and toreros
are the highest paid athletes
~~ Or artists. For, to be pre-
Clse, aficionados regard bull-
fighting as an art, rather than
4 Sport.

Even people who have heard
Nothing of bullfighting have
heard of Manolete, of course.
€ was one of the four great
toreros of this century (the
Others: Joselito, Belmonte, Ar-
ruzo).
ieee was born July 4,

» reached the top in Spain
by 1939, and from then until
his death was a national idol.
© drank heavily, lived each
Night as if the\next day might

be his last.

The horn of a Miura bull
ended Manolete’s life at 29;

his last words as he lay dying

were of his mother and his
mistress.

Can anything so cruel as
bullfigh ing be called a sport?
What - about hunting, where
men armed with powerful
guns go out to kill birds and

animals? At least the. bulls
have been trained to fight
back.

The Spanish call bullfight-
ing “La Fiesta Brava” and say
it is a marriage of two of life’s
ingredients — danger and art.

Plans are underway to make
a film based on the life of
Manolete, with Mike Rennie
in the title role.

Rennie, a great admirer of
Manolete, seems ideally cast.
He knows and loves bullfight-
ing, and is studying hard for
the: part. 4 <

“Manolete interests me be-
cause he was a-perfectionist,”
he said recently. “Whatever
he did had to be done with
the polish of an ambassador.
He was celebrated for cross-
ing the angle of a bull’s charge
—having calculated to the
critical fraction of an inch the
animal’s manoeuverability in
respect to matador, fence, and
the bull’s own turning radius
—and then taking up a stoic
stance, feet set in the sand. He
would refuse to dance away
but, in an attitude ‘of almost
Olympian detachment, would
force the bull to go around
him, exerting his human will
with the muleta, a small red
cloth not to be confused with
the cape .

“There. were. daysS- when
Manolete would receive as

high as 5,000 letters; and on
at least one occasion he was
paid, for an afternoon, a sum
equal to $50,000. But money
and kisses don’t alter the fact
that Death always sits on the
barrera.”

% This time the bull won. Matador Gregorio Sanchez had

ting,

his costume ripped to shreds recently in a Madrid bull-
but escaped serious injury. Photo shows ring attendants

trying to distract the attention of the bull as the infuriated!

animal tosses Sanchez,

a teas po

=
BS
=
3
=
3
z
=

Doug Hepburn, the world’s strongest man, will be one of the star attractions at the Van-

couver Labor Picnic in August.
a few years ago at Marpole Community Centre.
representative,

Harry Hickman, AAU

Photo shows Hepburn breaking the bench press record
Jimmy Walters is standing at the right while
looks on from the rear.

Frustrated feminine fan inquires,
why shouldn't women write sports?

By BETH MEYER

For some 40 years I have been an avid sports fan. During all these years I
have attended boxing matches, hockey games, swimming meets,- tennis matches —

I was present whenever there was athletic competition — though I was not much of
S

an athlete myself.

For almost as long as I’ve been a fan, I’ve wanted to be a sports writer. This

has remained one of the great
frustrations of my life, because
where was there room for a
woman to cover sports?

Even now, women are not
allowed in the press boxes at
the major league ball parks.
Occasionally a woman athlete
gets to do some feature, but
they usually become “A Wo-
man Looks at Sports” or “What
to. Wear at the Harvard-Yale
Game.”

Gussie Moran, on radio, does
some pre-and post-game com-
ments on Dodger games, but
they emanate from the studio,
and simply add “color” to the
broadcasts.

Despite the growing inter-
est in sports among women—
despite the growing attendance
of women at all sorts of
games, and not only on ladies’

‘days — bo paper has been

ready‘to believe that a, woman
could be interesting enough in
sports to be able to write about
them.

There have been many
things through the years that
I would: like to have written
about—the players and events
in the sports arena who have
offered me so many exciting
and pleasurable moments.

For instance, I was a very
little girl when I saw Babe
Ruth pitch, and I remember
the feeling .of personal loss
when ‘the was traded to the
Yankees.

I would like to have des-
cribed the power and deadly
accuracy of Walter Johnson’s
pitching; the catching of
Mickey Cochrane; the remark-

Sisler;

fielding of

able grace of George
the split-second
Rabbit Maranville.
I remember the days I spent
Field in Boston,
when the Braves held undis-
puted tenancy of the National
League cellar»
I followed them
interest than the
better-placed Red Sox, because

at Braves

Somehow
with “more

there was something unprofes-
sional. about them.

I’d like to have put into print
some of my excitement ati see-
ing Red Grange — not as an
undergraduate, but on his first
trip east with the professional
team, the Green Bay Packers.

Then there were the days
of the Longwood Cricket Club
— Bill Tilden and Bill Johns.
ton, Don Budge, Helen Wills
Moody, Suzanne Lenglen —
the stiff neck resulting from
following the progress of the
ball back and forth across the
net!

I still have a shelf-full of
notebooks, teeming with names
that I remember, that I kept
hoping to have a chance to
write about. In boxing, com-
petitors like Tiger Flowers,
Kid’ Chocolate, Jack Sharkey,
Ernie Schaaf (I really wanted
to have something to say about
his tragic death) and many
more.

The speed and skill of hoc-
key and basketball always
thrilled me, too, and I watched
bits of soccer games that were

always being played at Sol-

diers Field simultaneously
with the Harvard football
games.

4 wanted to write something
about Man of War, Discovery,
Whirlaway — that had little
to do with the odds on them.

And each spring I’m remind-
ed of the marathon in Boston,
where large numbers of run-
ners retrace the route of Paul
Revere on April 19, Patriot’s
Day, still an important holi-
day in New England,

But somehow the only name
I really remember is that of
Clarence DeMar, who won that
race so many times that it
became hard to remember
even the name of Paul Revere.

But all of this has to re-
main in the notebooks, and
in my own memories, because
I never got to be a_ sports
writer. I’m still a fan, though,
and maybe someday I'll be able
to say a word or two about
the great athletes of today.

“THE TRUTH
ABOUT HUNGARY”
By Herbert Aptheker

A full length study of the
1956 uprising in Hungary

Paper $2.25 - Cloth $3.25
plus sales tax & 10c postage
PEOPLE’S CO-OP
BOOKSTORE

337 W. Pender, Vancouver

_JUNE 28, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 15

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