; 10.) Robinson hits racism, | gives St. Louis blues THERE HAS rarely been a More dramatic and fitting reply to racist venom in sports than that given by members of the Tooklyn Dodgers to a certain Unknown Cardinal in St. Louis Tecently, 2 In the top of the seventh inn a § the Dodgers scored two runs i tie up the game 2-2. A pinch tter had batted for Carl Ers- pine, the starting pitcher, and a Cards came to bat in the Om of the seventh rookie Pitcher Joe Black took the pend for the league leaders. meone in the dim recesses of € Card dugout shouted out a ul Word followed by a racist ®pithet, This sort of thing, according petie Dodgers, has become rare, a Ost forgotten, around the ube Its occurrence in St. ns Uis may or may not have been Mecidental, but it is worth : © to recall a few facts in § connection. t was St. Louis in 1947 where ‘strike of players planned a : ©” against the advent of a © Robinson into the pre- IS lily-white league. mae St. Louis’ Case Hotel that Koni the only one on the i i Where the Negro players. : © Dodgers, Giants and vi Braves may. not room with their teammates. It is the current St. Louis team (under indicted income tax evader Fred Saigh Jr.) which together with Bob Carpenter’s Phillies remains the only Na- tiona] League entry which won’t even sign .a Negro player to any of its farm teams. : It was in St. Louis in 1947 that the most flagrant and pro- vocative act of violence was turned loose against the rookie Robinson when pitcher Brecheen took a grounder down the first base line and instead of making the routine toss to first ran over to the baseline and viciously dug the ball into Robinson’s ribs. (He never did that in Ebbets Field.) og * * SO HERE IT was’ on a warm Monday night in ‘‘Sportsmans Park,’’ 1952, and once again the voice of Rankin and Bilbo snarl- ed out over a National League diamond. Black, the rookie from Mor- gan State, just continued pitch- ing and got the side out. When Robinson came to bat in the top of the eighth he stopped first to say to Card catcher Del Rice “T am sick and tired of that stuff from the bench and you can tell that Sulleng plank blank that I said so.’ Robby then drew a ate and jockeyed off first with a big lead, Pitcher Birazle threw over hastily and the throw evaded the first baseman, Robby racing all the way to third. He took a long lead off.third, Brazle, upset, then | pitched to Roy Campanella and the last anyone saw of the base- ball it had sailed clean over the high left field stand into the street for one of the longest home ryns anyone remembered being hit in St. Louis. Robinson and Campanella trotted around the bases and the entire Dodger dugout erupted to * receive them with ecstatic hand- shakes and embraces. As always in St.Louis when the Dodgers come to town — something anyone listening on the radio back in New York can hear with no difficulty — almost half the crowd was wp cheering Campanella and Robin- son as they trotted home. Adding a pleasant filip to things, Carl Furillo followed with another two run homer the same inning to make the score 6-2. Black hurled three runless innings and was the winning pitcher as the Dodgers won their eighth straight. | Pow": in North Korea stage Own ‘Olympic Games’ in camp Bi eT athletic meeting of dese) land (U.S. prisoners is a €d in a letter written to 1 gee Daily Worker from No.4 Tal W. H. Smith of Camp 1, Chongsong, North Korea. Writes, an our company,” he core, turned as one man to Membe Newhouse, well-known Be Y of the Gloucester Ath- eople? lub,” when the Chinese ie S Volunteers gave per- mmit to form an organizing tee for the sports. Better continues: Owled Newhouse’s invaluable fu) ay se and under his care- 8p Idance we formed our 8 committee. do, . Members came from Lon- fe fast, vero, Doncaster, Bel- duty ae Gloucester, my own ae that of secretary. MD erptral committee was set “Retivitye Coordinate the company Com €S on a camp level. This €€ consisted of two or | Wher, three men from each company. The most active member from our company was Frank Upjohn, of London, who did a first-class job announcing events and win- ners over the camp loudspeaker system. * * * ‘ _- NATURALLY TO carry out the events we needed extra kit. We just made out a list of the things we needed: discus, shot, high jump, sawdust for a jump- ing ground, rope, football, vol- leyball, and hurdles or wood for making them. In the middle of this shat- tered bomb-ridden country, where foreign invasion has caused so much havoc, our hopes of getting them were very small, ~But within a few days we were given the discus, shot, ropes, sawdust, and organized into par- ties to collect wood for the high jump and parallel bars. A vaulting box was provided oe tiletes will compete Byars ago, seats 70,000." ae ace athletes will meet the world’s best in this mag: tadium in Helsinki, Finland, next month, 708 stadium, from somewhere in the area and we set to work training our men for the various events. A group of men came forward to act as carpenters and very soon hurdles were being placed out for the men to practise on. Eliminating contests took place in our company and we selected the best to go forward to the big event. At the opening a torch was carried from the camp in re- lays. Norley, of ‘Bristol, carrying it on the final lap to the Lae a stand where the company co mander lit the main torch and declared the games open.- The weather was in our favor, and brilliant sunshine accom- panied us on our four-day pro- gram, * re * THE TIMEKEEPERS, judges and recorders were selected and carried their badges of office on their left breast. The judges were POW’s and she verdict was final. It would be spoacthle for me to give you a full picture of the freedom and happiness felt by all the men during these meet- ings. Many men told me it was . hard to realize they were still in a POW camp. A few days before the meeting everybody was issued with a new summer suit, shoes, shirt, cap and shorts. Throughout this meeting we were given every as- sistance possible by the Chinese Volunteers. True friendship and coopera- tion were the keynotes of the success of this grand display. I hope the above will help to show in some way the treatment we are receiving in this camp. We will never forget this. We cannot — never before have POW’s been treated so leniently. ‘JACKIE ROBINSON cabaret! [= © SPORTLIGHT By BERT WHYTE - ON SUNDAY I went down to Powell Street Grounds to watch Ed Simpson take colored. movies of the PT Clippers in action. Ed has a new camera and acts like De Mille these days. Unfortunately, the ‘sun hid behind dark clouds all afternoon; whether the action shots will show up well on the screen is problematical. The sun didn’t shine, and neither did the Clippers, who jog 9-1 to Boilermakers. It was their second debacle in two days (on Saturday they dropped a 14-5 decision to Nisei) and now the team occupies that unhappy seventh place in Industrial League standings. This situation can only change ror the better, and I think it will. The (Clippers were a bit disorganized all last week because their coach was away on holidays. Like any team, they require firm leadership, which has been absent this past week. Individually ‘the boys stack up against most players in the league; with their coach back on the job they should soon begin to click as a collective unit. (P.S.—Clippers’ coach returned Tuesday, and the boys went out and beat the league-leading Western Bridge 5-1 that same. night.) oo G * * AFTER THE BALL game Simpson took me over to his hacienda in North Vancouver and ran off some films showing great ring battles of the past: Dempsey flattening Carpentier in four rounds on July 2, 1921, at Boyle’s Thirty Acres; Dempsey and Firpo staging their wild two-rcund melee in 1923, with the Manassa Mauler emerging the victor; the Tunney-Dempsey battle in Chicago, with the famous long count in slow motion; Schmeling knocking out Louis in their first battle, and the Brown Bomber pulverizing Des Schmell in less than a round when they met again; Louis getting up from the floor to batter bald Tony Galento. from pillar to post. * * * THAT HARDY perennial, “Could Dempsey have licked Louis when both were in their prime?” was posed again this week by Lester Rodney, sports editor of the New York Daily Worker. Rodney thinks Louis could have taken Dempsey via the kayo route “because he! hit harder, faster and shorter with both hands.” This writer disagrees. Watching the film of the first Louis- Schmeling scrap and seeing how easy it was for, the beetle-browed German to find Joe’s jaw. with his right, it struck me that Louis had the same trouble solving the fighting styles of Walcott and Billy Conn: the first time he: met them. In return bouts ‘it was a different story. Seems to me that Dempsey, with his shifting, bobbing, weav- ing style, would have baffled the Brown Bomber and found plenty of openings for,those lethal lefts and rights which sunk Willard, Carpentier, bas 9 Miske and Firpo. I believe he’d have knocked out -Louis, too. But only once, for in a return match Louis, on the basis of his record in similar situations, would have solved aes style and put him down for the count. : * * * BARGAIN BASEMENT: Winner of last week’s bargain base- ment buck was young Joe Dewhurst, who correctly identified the ring’s “Hammering Hank” as Hammering Henry Armstrong, triple-crown champ of the Thirties. Armstrong held the feather, lightweight and welterweight titles. “Why don’t you make your questions harder, something we experts can get our teeth into?” writes a fan who signs himself “Ring Enthusiast.” Ail right, try chewing on this one: When Jim Corbett fought his famous battle on a barge in San Francisco Bay against Joe Choynski, one of the latter’s seconds, just prior to the bell, grabbed Choynski’s gloves and dropped them over- board, in the hope that the fight would have to be a bare-knuckle affair. This second was a fighter himself, a champion in fact. What was his name? Win a-dollar by being the first person to mail in the correct answer to Bert Whyte, Pacific Tribune, Room 6, 406 Main Street, Vancouver 4, B.C. PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 27, 1952 — PAGE 11