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A STUDY OF THE INTERDEPENDENCE
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ABSTRACT

SPORTS JOURNALISM IN THE 1920's:
A STUDY OF THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF THE
DAILY NEWSPAPER AND THE SPORTS HERO

By
Robert B. Kilborn, Jr.

Generally, there are two schools of thought on the
subject of the hero in sports. One holds that athletes of
the 1970's are the greatest in history because they are
mechanically superior to any who have preceded them. The
second school maintains that modern athletes h0pelessly
lack the color and personality of their predecessors.

On the premise that a skilled athlete will seem
heroic in inverse proportion to the amount of exposure he
receives in the communications media of his day, this study
confined itself to the decade of the 1920's when daily
newspapers enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the area of sports
coverage. The study compared coverage of three famous
sports figures--Babe Ruth of baseball, Red Grange of foot-
ball, and Jack Fempsey of boxing--in an effort to determine
why they were made to seem heroic. These men were selected
because not only were they the leading figures in their

respective sports but also because they tried the faith of

Robert B. Kilborn, Jr.

sportswriters to the degree that irreparable harm to their
images might have resulted; yet it did not.

In order that the extremes of flamboyance and con-
servativeness might be represented in the study, the Detroit
I122§.W35 selected as an example of the former and the

New York Times as an example of the latter. Stories and

 

columns on the sports pages of the two newspapers were
studied for frequency, style, content, and approach, and
with an eye toward the subjective judgments of the writers.
The months August through December of the years 1923, 1925,
and 1927 were decided upon both to account for fluctuations
in the manner in which the activities of each man were
reported and because they include the peaks as well as the
low points of each athlete's career.

Results of the study indicate that journalists of
the 1920's took the concept of heroism in sports seriously
and generally manifested an unwillingness to tamper with
heroic images once they were established. It also would
seem that by preserving a certain distance between them-
selves and these athletes the writers declined to risk any
disillusionment that might have resulted from closer per-
sonal contact. This technique would seem to have preserved
for a time the mystique of highly organized forms of sport
that is largely absent today because of ever-widening

exposure through the media of mass communications.

SPORTS JOURNALISM IN THE 1920's:

A STUDY OF THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF THE
DAILY NEWSPAPER AND THE SPORTS HERO
By

,A

x‘k‘

Robert B? Kilborn, Jr.

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
School of Journalism

1972

Accepted by the faculty of the School of Journalism,
College of Communication Arts, Michigan State University,

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master

IO. WMW

Director of Thesis

of Arts degree.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The friendship, support, and assistance of
Dr. W. Cameron Meyers have increased the value and meaning
of graduate study at Michigan State University. These

contributions are acknowledged with appreciation.

iii

CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.

BIBLIOGRAPHY .

TABLE OF CONTENTS

iv

Page

12
22
60
87
131
137

CHAPTER I

A corollary to the existence of spectator sports is
that, inevitably, the public will regard its athletes as
heroes--persons through whom one can Share vicariously the
thrill of competition, the victories, awards, and glory
missing from one's personal experience. History records
that heroism in sport is at least as old as the ancient
Greek city-states, whose champion athletes were so admired
that their every need was met at public expense.

All other things being equal, however, some athletes
will always seem more heroic than others.; At no time is a
sports figure guaranteed lasting fame for his deeds; indeed,
the annals of sport are top-heavy with stories of those
whose fame disappeared almost as quickly as it was won.
.And those who do achieve the public's enduring admiration
cannot claim to have done so without the assistance of one
or more well-placed communicators who serve to keep their
images before the public in a positive context.

The stories are legion of contemporary athletes
who have capitalized on their fame to win lucrative pro-
fessional contracts and private business opportunities, to
earn large sums of money by lending their names to the com-

mercial endorsement of manufactured products, and even to

win election to high political office. Yet, it will be
argued in some circles that in the traditional sense the
sports world no longer enjoys athletes of the same heroic
mold that has characterized its past. cA common complaint
is that many of today's best-known athletes fail even to
attempt to mask their indifference, arrogance, contempt,
cynicism, and greed from the public.

Perhaps today's athlete can be forgiven a measure
of his cynicism and greed on the grounds that they stem
from a basic insecurity. More conscious and protective of
his physical well-being than the average man-~the loss of
that well-being sharply reducing his ability to earn his
1iving--he may be less sure of himself as the times grow
more uncertain than are persons from other walks of life.

On the other hand, athletes always have been con-
scious of the need to avoid disabling physical problems,
even when times were much less troubled than they are today.
Or, perhaps theologian Reinhold Niebuhr struck very close
to the truth when he wrote that:

Heroes can thrive only where ignorance reduces history
to mythology. They cannot survive the coldly critical
temper of modern thought, when it is functioning nor-
mally, nor can they be worshipped by a generation which

has every facility for deteciing their foibles and
analyzing their limitations.

 

1Reinhold Niebuhr, "Heroes and Hero Worship,”
Nation, Feb. 23, 1921, p. 293.

It does seem safe to say that today, more than at
any previous time, athletes must endure the continuous
criticism, probing, examination, and analysis of a formi-
dable array of Sports reporters representing television,
radio, daily and weekly newspapers, and numerous weekly,
monthly, and annual magazines. When even their private
lives appear to be public property athletes may well com-
mand sympathy for adopting a contemptuous or cynical stance.

Yet, even when sports figures were better able to
shield their private lives from the communications media
and ultimately the public, it was impossible to hide alto-
gether. Reporters of five decades ago delighted in focusing
the spotlight on the private lives of some of the greatest
athletes in history, and although their lives were in some
cases anything but exemplary the athletes who lived them
became and have remained heroesé-heroes of the very mold
that seems so absent today. For, perhaps more than those
from any other era, the important athletes of the 1920's
continue to rank with the greatest of America's sports
heroes.

Why? Was the heroism of those men due to a lesser
or greater impact of the media than is the case today, or
were their deeds simply so overwhelming that no amount of
adverse publicity could have cancelled them out? Or was

their heroism accurately a function of times so untroubled

that reporters felt free to concentrate on building images
so colorful that they survive, practically intact, to this
day?

This study will undertake an examination of the
Sports journalism of the mid-1920's as it affected the
careers of some American athletes who rose to greatness
during that period. An effort will be made to test the
thesis that the deeds of these men were of such magnitude
that sportswriters were disinclined to dwell on the nega-
tive aspects of their lives because, having made heroes of
them, the writers felt compelled to protect and prOpagate
their images rather than risk the disillusionment of the
athletes' publics. ~The assumption will be made that the
public generally needed living heroes since the recent past,
both in and outside the sports world, had been a series of
economic, social, and moral crises that had caused divi-

sions so deep that the New York Times, looking back upon

 

it, was moved to ask editorially, "How have we managed to
survive?"2

For the purposes of this study, three athletes seem
particularly suited, since their lives included a measure
of both unqualified success and disappointment during this

period. George Herman "Babe” Ruth was chosen to represent

 

2Editorial, "The Old and The New," New York Times,
Jan. 1, 1920, p. 14.

baseball, Harold "Red” Grange to represent football, and
William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey to represent boxing--these
being the three spectator sports most popular with the
sports public at the time. The active careers of all of
these men transcended the 1920's, but each reached his
competitive peak during the middle years of that decade.
Further, each was the leading figure in his sport and con-
tinues to be remembered in a heroic context nearly half a
century later.

The study was conducted within two sets of param-
eters, both of which imposed time limitations. The period
studied included the years 1923, 1925, and 1927. Alternate
years were chosen to account for fluctuations both in the
continuity of each athlete's career and in the manner in
which his exploits were reported to the public in the
daily newspapers. It is important that 1923 serve as the
starting point because, although Dempsey already was the
reigning heavyweight boxing champion and Ruth the acknowl-
edged leader among baseball's star players, Red Grange did
not become a figure of national importance until that year.
Similarly, 1927 is important as the terminal year because
Dempsey and Grange were out of competition in 1928, and
by 1929 the crash of the New York Stock Exchange may be
said to have overshadowed any developments in the sports

world.

Consecutive years also were decided against for
other reasons, chief of which was that although he was cham-
pion Dempsey did not actively defend his title between 1923
and 1926. And, although Grange's greatest season was 1924
he was by then nationally famous. Selecting 1923 provided
an opportunity to follow his development as a hero, a
process which had already taken place in the cases of
Dempsey and Ruth. Ruth had highly successful seasons both
in 1924 and in 1926, but to have included them all would
have been repetitive. Nearly all of Ruth's seasons during
the 1920's were spectacular.

For purposes of expediency, less than half of each
year was included in the study, specifically the period
August 1 to December 31. This five-month time span at
once included the decisive months of the major league base-
ball season and the complete football season each year.
Jack Dempsey also fought what are considered to be his two
greatest matches on days that fell within this period. An
earlier starting point or a later terminal date would have
tipped the balance in favor of Ruth, and possibly Dempsey,
since baseball news tended to begin reaching the public
regularly after February 1 and boxing news tended to be
continuous throughout the year. Extending the terminal
date to December 31 made possible the inclusion of material
from "The Year in Review" columns, a favorite device of

sports editors then as now.

Of the daily newspapers available on microfilm, two
were selected with an eye toward representation of the
extremes to whiCh sports journalism was likely to have been
carried--reserve and flamboyance. It was reasoned that the

New York Times would probably best exemplify the first

 

extreme, and that the Detroit Times would be representative

 

of the second. Additionally, the two newspapers offered
several important comparisons and contrasts. Both were
important and influential in their respective cities. Both
also experienced steady growth throughout the period. The

New York Times increased in circulation from 341,174 copies
3

 

daily and 544,820 on Sundays in 1923 to some 375,249 daily
and 653,437 on Sundays in 1927. According to published
figures, the Times was New York's fourth largest daily and
third largest morning newspaper in 1927, behind the tab-

loids Daily News and Mirror.4 The Detroit Times, a member

 

paper of the controversial and colorful Hearst organization,

enjoyed a circulation gain of from 176,756 copies daily and

192,534 on Sundays in 19235

6

to 249,183 and 326,875, respec-

tively, in 1927. William Randolph Hearst acquired the

 

3N.—W. Ayer G Son's American Newspaper Annual and
DirectoryTTPhiladelphIa: N. W. Ayer 8 Son, 1924), p. 740.

4

 

Editor G Publisher, July 16, 1927, p. 49.

 

5N. W. Ayer G Son's American Newspaper Annual and
Directory, p.'476.

 

6Editor 5 Publisher, July 16, 1927, p. 47.

 

Times in 1921, and throughout this period it maintained its
status as the city's second largest daily, behind the

Detroit News.

 

Additionally, the pages of both newspapers offered
the by-lines of men recognized then and still remembered
as three of the giants among sports writers. John Kieran's

columns appeared in the New York Times, and Damon Runyon,

 

once described by his equally acclaimed colleague, Paul
Gallico, as "the greatest of all" American sportswriters,7
and Bill Corum both wrote stories and columns for the

New York American, which were distributed by Hearst's wire

 

services and appeared in the Detroit Times.

 

Finally, although neither newspaper may have been
a threat to the circulation zones of the other, it is not
without significance that they were printed-at different
times of the day--morning in New York and afternoon in
Detroit--and thus were not likely to approach the same
stories from the same angles.

Nor could the locations of the two papers be over-
looked, since they undoubtedly influenced the manner in
which sports news was covered. Both cities, historically,
have been enthusiastic in their support of spectator

sports. New Yorkers in the mid-1920's could choose from

 

7Paul Gallico, The Golden People (Garden City, N. Y.:
Doubleday 5 Company, 1965), p. 293.

 

among three major league baseball teams, two major profes-
sional football teams, a professional ice hockey team, a
busy schedule of indoor and outdoor boxing matches, and
horse racing at tracks such as Aqueduct and Belmont Park.
Detroiters paid to see a major league baseball team, a
major professional football team, an ice hockey team,
boxing matches, and horse races. In addition, both cities
actively supported college sports events, particularly
football.

Both cities were appropriate for this study insofar
as football is concerned because even a Red Grange had to
prove himself unusually worthy of admiration there before
it was granted. Local interest in University of Michigan
football was high in Detroit, if only because the institu-
tion's Ann Arbor campus was a relatively short distance
away and Michigan teams enjoyed considerable success in
the Western, or ”Big Ten," Conference. Grange played for
the University of Illinois, a participating member of the
conference, and helped promote a keen rivalry between his
school and Michigan during his varsity years. In New York,
on the other hand, fans of college football were slow to
concede that the quality of play outside the East was even
comparable to, much less better than, that of the schools
in their own region. As recently as 1922 the Walter Camp
All-America team listed seven players from eastern schools,

leaving only four positions for players from the rest of

10

the country;znulthe late Stanley Woodward, himself a sports-
writer of renown, wrote that in 1923, "Painfully and
reluctantly . . ( Eastern gridiron experts recognized that
the ascendancy of the Atlantic seaboard was no longer the
whole story."8
Since both New York and Detroit had successful
baseball teams in the American League, fans in both cities
could be expected to follow with interest the exploits of
Babe Ruth. Ruth played for the New York Yankees at the
time and led them to a first place finish in 1923, with
the Detroit Tigers right behind in second place.r In 1924
the Yankees finished second, the Tigers third. In 1927
the Yankees dominated the league, but Detroit finished a
respectable fourth. Individually, there was a keen rivalry
between Ruth and some of Detroit's best players for the
league's batting awards. Harry Heilmann of the Tigers
narrowly edged out Ruth for batting honors in 1923. A
year later Ruth won, but Heilmann was a close fourth. In
1926 Henry Manush of Detroit won the championship, with
Ruth second, and Heilmann and still another Tiger player,
Bob Fothergill, tied for third. The rivalry was made
increasingly interesting because Ruth and Heilmann were

close personal friends.

 

8Stanley Woodward, "The Football Panorama and
Football in the East," in Sport's Golden Age, ed. by
Allison Danzig and Peter Brandwein (New York: Harper 8
Brothers, 1948), p. 117.

11

In boxing, New York was the acknowledged center of
that sport. Dempsey, although he was from an obscure
Colorado mining town, was a regular visitor to the city
and fought two of his championship matches there in the
1920's. Further, New York was the base of operations of
George ”Tex" Rickard, the most famous promoter in boxing\
history and the man who staged most of Dempsey's major
matches. New York also was the home of Gene Tunney, to
whom Dempsey lost his heavyweight championship in 1926.

Detroit, although less important in the national
boxing picture at the time, also was keenly interested in
the sport.

The above conditions and limitations were intended
to reduce the study to workable proportions. As might be
imagined, an enormous volume of material was written about
these three men, sometimes at the rate of three or four
stories a day. In an effort to focus on material that would
seem to influence the reader in either a positive or nega-
tive direction, stories of mere fact were weighted less
heavily than were stories based on the personal opinions
of the writer. This technique basically served to eliminate,
or at least reduce, emphasis on material provided by various
wire services although at the same time stressing stories
and columns written by staff members of the newspapers

themselves.

CHAPTER II

"Ballyhoo," a pOpular word in the 1920's, by diction-
ary definition means sensational propaganda. Thanks to
ballyhoo, spectator sports were boosted to a level of popu—
larity in the 1920's that they had never known before.
Frederick Lewis Allen, a social historian, wrote that sport

1

had become "an American obsession," and that:

Promoters, chambers of commerce, newspaper-owners,
Sports writers, press agents, radio broadcasters, all
found profit in exploiting the public's mania for
sporting shows and its willingness to be persuaded
that the great athletes of the day were supermen.2
Viewed from a perspective of fifty years, however,
such mania seems faintly illogical. Past events had treated
the American peOple roughly, sometimes cruelly. Had their
responses to those stimuli been caution, suspicion, and
doubt it is questionable that many historians would have
been surprised.
.The world had been at war from 1914 to late 1918,
with the United States deeply involved in the final two

years. Some 2,810,000 American males had been drafted for

 

1Frederick L. Allen, Only Yesterday (New York:
Perennial Library, Harper 8 Row, 1964), p. 66.

2Ibid., p. 172.

12

13

military duty, and those who lost their lives or who were
reported missing in action numbered more than 100,000. The
cost of the war in money was estimated at more than $32
billion. On the home front, however, the costs in hardship
and heartache were equally staggering.

A climate of hatred and intolerance grew out of the
war years that may not yet have dissipated. A powerful
nativistic sentiment took hold of the national conscience
and led to ugly reprisals against many eastern and southern
Europeans who had emigrated to America before the war.
Teaching of the German language was dropped from the cur-
riculum of many public schools. German-Americans, even
in high public positions, were victims of social discrimina-
tion. The Ku Klux Klan, an organization opposed to the
civil rights and liberties of non-whites, non-Protestants,
and the foreign born, surfaced in the southern states and
spread rapidly across the nation.

A wave of bombings, strikes, and mass demonstrations
against the government--called "Red scares" because their
leaders in many cases were persons who embraced the com-
munist political philosophy--alarmed much of the citizenry.
Government law-enforcement agencies counterattacked and
raids were carried out against aliens and suspected radi-
cals. Arrests and deportations without benefit of public

trials in a court of law followed. Riots between whites

and persons of the Negro race shook twenty-six American

14

cities in the summer of 1919, and more riots followed in
1920. Labor strikes idled more than 4,000,000 workers in
1919 and shut down the vital coal and steel industries,
among others. The economy was in a recession and, although
it had rallied by 1920, prices of most retail goods had more
than doubled since 1915.

And the national political picture was uncertain.
Former President Theodore Roosevelt died in January, 1919,
leaving the Republican Party temporarily leaderless.
President Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralyzing stroke in
October, 1919, leaving the nation for a time without the
leadership that had seen it safely through the war. The
Congress, if not the nation as a whole, was divided on the
issue of ratification of the treaty specifying conditions
for peace and over the means for insuring peace in the
future.

Historians have recorded that the citizenry, anxious
for relief from the anxieties and pressures of post-war
America, turned its attention to sport. In some respects,
however, sport must have seemed a tonic of dubious value.
Boxing, for example, only began its advance toward respecta-
bility after the war. The state of New York had outlawed
professional boxing in 1917 and, judging from a lukewarm

endorsement by the New York Times of a bill introduced in

 

1920 in the state legislature to re-sanction the sport,

15

unpleasant memories still were fresh. The Ting: commented
that:

Few tears were shed when the old boxing law was repealed,

as the public had become disgusted with numerous actions

of unscrupulous persons connected with the Sport.3

Elsewhere, the war had interfered with college foot-
ball, taking many athletes from school into military service
and drastically cutting back the varsity programs of dozens
of teams. Many schools suspended football for one or more
of the war years, among them the universities of North
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, Washington,
West Virginia, Cornell, and Yale. When most schools resumed
the sport in earnest after the war many of the traditionally
successful teams had trouble reestablishing their strength.
Of all sports, however, none found the times more

trying than did major league baseball. Its recent past
had been turbulent, with player unrest, strike threats,
court fights, and internal dissension; but its darkest
hour came in September, 1920, when it was revealed that the
Chicago White Sox had been bribed to lose the previous
year's World Series. Typical of newspaper reaction to the
news of the scandal was this comment on the sports page of
the New York Times:

Baseball has been dealt a body blow, the effects of

which will be apparent for a long time to come. A
Sport which has been held up for years as typifying

 

3"Another Chance for Boxing," New York Times,
Jan. 19, 1920, p. 10.

16

everything that was honest and fair is suddenly unmasked
and a condition is disclosed which has shocked the sport
lovers of the nation as they were never Shocked before

. I : it is poSsible that it never again will enjoy the
confidence which has been its portion up to this time.4
Eliot Asinof, a sportswriter whose book about the
scandal was drawn largely from contemporary newspaper
accounts, concluded that the unhappy news had been a "crush-
ing blow at American pride," touching all strata of American
life and causing the reputation of the so-called national
game to hit rock bottom.5
Better and happier times were ahead, however. The
decade of the 1920's came to be known as the "Golden Age of
Sport" for the multitude of famous athletes it produced and
the astounding records and performances for which they were
responsible. An uncounted number of books, both fiction
and non-fiction, magazine stories and articles, and even
stage and screen plays have represented the decade as being
the standard against which all others in sports are compared.

Paul Gallico, who had been a sportswriter and sports editor

of the New York Daily News during the period, wrote some

 

thirty-five years later that:

 

4"Comment on Current Events in Sport," ibid.,
Oct. 4, 1920, p. 10.

SEliot Asinof, Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and
the 1919 World Series (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1963), pp. 197-198.

 

17

This remarkable ten years . . . saw the most fabulous
set of champions arise in every game, amateur and pro-
fessional, not only from the point of view of perform-
ance, but of character as well. . . . Each had a
romance connected with him or her . . . for they were
all success stories, the great American fairy tale, the
rise from rags to riches . . . actually dramatized
before our eyes.

Gallico fancied himself a sort of custodian of the
"Golden Age." He wrote of it often, even after he left
sports journalism to write fiction. He was not alone,
however, for several others who were sports reporters in
the 1920's, and whose by-lines may have been as familiar
as the athletes about whom they wrote, later felt compelled
to publish their own memories of the period. Among them
were Grantland Rice, Bill Corum, John Kieran, Stanley
Woodward, and Tom Meany. Their books offer insights not
only into the significance of spectator sports but also of
the status of their profession.

A recurrent theme in their writings is that sports
journalism came of age in the 1920's after the most humble
of origins.

Grantland Rice wrote in his autobiography that his
first job in sports, on the staff of the Nashville Daily
News in 1901, paid five dollars a week. Since the managing
editor considered sportswriting "akin to playing in the

back-yard sand pile," Rice also was assigned to cover the

 

6Gallico, The Golden People, pp. 25-26.

 

18

Tennessee legislature, the customs house, and the Nashville

7

produce market. When he advanced to the sports editorship

of the Nashville Tennessean in 1907, at seventy dollars a

 

week, he worked an average twelve-hour day with sole respon-
sibility for two pages of sports, a daily column of verse
for the editorial page, and the Nashville theater beat. On
Sundays there were four pages of sports.8

John Kieran, popular sports columnist of the Ngw

York Times in the 1920's, recalled that when he joined the

 

paper's sports staff in 1913 writers were paid a space rate
of seven dollars a column. Because nothing he wrote was

printed for the first three weeks he held the job he earned

no pay.9

Gallico, although not personally affected by such
difficult working conditions since his own career did not
begin until 1921,10 was particularly critical of them in
his books. Sports journalism, he wrote, was ill-paid and

sportswriters were considered "one grade above the office

cat," eking out a meager existence and being required by

 

7Grantland Rice, The Tumult and the Shouting (New
York: A. S. Barnes 8 Co., 1954), p. 8.

81bid., p. 35.

9John Kieran, Not Under Oath (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1964), p. 18.

10Paul Gallico, Further Confessions of a Story
Writer (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday E Company, 1961),
p. 11.

19

their publishers to double as publicists for local baseball
franchises and boxing promoters. As a result, according to
Gallico, many sportswriters were as much "lushes and tramps"
as the peOple with whom they associated and about whom they
wrote. It was not until after the World War that the status
of sports journalism improved, sports pages became more
plentiful, and a writer was able to acquire "a motorcar, a
house in the country, and the admiration of his fellow
citizens."11
There is evidence that the improvement in status

cited by Gallico was jealously guarded. A report in 1927

in Editor 8 Publisher acknowledged that, "Today the sports

 

section is a determining factor in the success or failure
of any daily paper," and that "Present day Opinion of .
newspaper editors, psychologists, trade publication editors,
advertising men, and journalism instructors is that sports
on their present scale would be impossible without the
sports section of the daily papers."12

In a meeting at the 1928 convention of the American
Society of Newspaper Editors, one editor plaintively told

his audience that:

 

11Gallico, The Golden People, pp. 291-292.

 

12Lester Jordan, "Sports Reporting Was a Scholarly
Occupation Fifty Years Ago," Editor 6 Publisher, July 2,
1927, p. 9.

20

Sporting departments are making ever-increasing demands
for space until distracted managing editors are wonder-
ing when the growth in this department of news will
cease.
Citing responses to a recent survey of the growth of sports
journalism, the same editor quoted an unidentified colleague
as complaining that space in his newspaper no longer was as
plentiful as it had been previously because "once the sports
department gets it you can't take it away from them."13
Protective of their gains, newspaper sports depart-
ments churned out facts and figures at a near runaway pace,
especially in the large cities, expanding their field in
direct proportion to the expansion of spectator sports.
That expansion bordered on the dramatic. In 1927, the
Associated Press, an organization that supplied news stories
from distant points to its affiliated newspapers, created
an eight-man sports department, quickly determined that
more men were needed, and added another four reporters.
United Press, a similar organization, reported a three-fold
increase in the volume of sports news carried on its wires
between 1925 and 1928. The New York Herald-Tribune increased
its sports coverage by six columns a day between 1924 and

1927, a greater increase than for any other department in

the paper except financial news. By 1928, some 60 per cent

 

13"Sports Dig Ever More Deeply into Newspaper's
Editorial Space," ibid., April 28, 1928, pp. 44, 46.

21

of the local news in the paper was Sports. And the New York
limp: gained almost two full pages of sports reading matter
daily between 1924 and 1927.14
By 1923 it was apparent that the public had willingly
and eagerly embraced spectator sports, despite some of the
recent misfortunes and indiscretions of which those sports
had been victims. Huge, permanent sports arenas Opened in
cities and on college campuses across the nation--including
Yankee Stadium in New York, the Los Angeles Coliseum, and
football stadiums at Columbia, Dartmouth, Nebraska, Cali-
fornia, Illinois, and the Michigan Agricultural College--
later Michigan State University--with others recently opened
and still others under construction. A host of colorful
and exciting athletes to fill these arenas already was on
the scene or soon would make their debuts. The stage
appeared set, too, for sports journalism to make its great-

est strides. It was not long until critics were concluding,

as a writer in Editor 6 Publisher did, that:

 

Without the assistance of the newspapers, sports would
never have attained their present popularity. Sports
officials are among the first to admit the debt that
baseball football, boxing and other sports owe the
papers.1g

 

14Ibid., p. 44.

 

15Lester Jordan, "Sports Reporting Was a Scholarly
Occupation Fifty Years Ago," p. 9.

CHAPTER III

In 1923, when Yankee Stadium was opened to the public
in New York it was nicknamed "The House That Ruth Built."
No larger baseball stadium had ever been built. The new
facility also had a tailor-made target for the lefthanded
power hitter--a 296-foot right field fence, a distance sub-
stantially shorter than that of most other baseball parks.
It stood to reason that Babe Ruth would find the short
fence to his liking, yet his value to the Yankees, and to
baseball in general, was questionable.

Ruth had had record-breaking seasons in 1919, 1920,
and 1921. In 1922, however, he had suffered from an in-
flated sense of self-importance, violating the rules of
his own team and of the American League with annoying
frequency and performing well below his capacity during
the regular season and particularly during the World Series.
He had begun the 1922 season under a suspension imposed by
the commissioner of baseball for playing in exhibition
games around the nation without permission. Later, he was
fined and stripped of his duties as captain of the Yankees
after throwing dirt into the face of an umpire and climbing
into the grandstand to fight with a heckler. Still later,

he was suspended for three days after another row with an

22

23

umpire. Finally, another three-day suspension was imposed
after Ruth used vulgar and threatening language to still
another umpire whose decisions he disagreed with.

Ruth contritely promised to reform the following
season, a promise that naturally attracted the careful
scrutiny of baseball fans and officials, not to mention
sportswriters and editors. Contrite or not, he could
hardly be ignored; he was too important a personality for
that. Thus, if the sports pages reflected a lack of sym-
pathy or open suspicion of the player's intentions through-
out the season, the morale of Ruth himself, of his teammates,
and of the entire Yankee organization might suffer. So
easily had the Yankees been defeated by their New York
rivals, the Giants, in the 1921 and 1922 World Series, that
Yankee morale might well have been fragile in 1923. In
addition, Ruth was a tremendous gate attraction wherever
he played, and a suspicious or hostile press might have
undermined his pOpularity with fans and their confidence
in him.

On the other hand, if the press made a gift of its
forgiveness and blithely overlooked Ruth's past indiscre-
tions only to have him renege on his promise to behave, the
consequences might be embarrassing. Not only were there
credibility problems to think of, but, as Tom Meany, a
former New York sportswriter, pointed out in his memoirs,

the travel expenses of baseball writers in 1923 were paid

24

by the major league teams they covered, a situation many of
the writers were sensitive about.1 How the reading public
might have reacted to news that its baseball writers actu-
ally were working for the teams they covered is a moot
question, but it is at least doubtful that most Sports
journalists would have wanted their newly-acquired respecta-
bility placed in jeopardy.

Nor was it without some significance that many news-

papers, among them the Detroit Times, carried Babe Ruth's

 

syndicated, ghost-writtenz baseball columns regularly
throughout the season--columns often dealing with playing
tips and advice to youngsters--and were faced with the
decision to continue them in 1923 or drop them on the
grounds that Ruth's behavior hardly constituted a suit-
able example for readers to follow.

Happily, Ruth did reform in 1923. He improved his
batting average from .315 in 1922 to .393, the highest of
his career; and although he lost the American League
batting championship to Harry Heilmann of Detroit, he
overwhelmingly was voted the "Most Valuable Player” of

the league, a great honor. Ruth also led the Yankees to

 

1Tom Meany, There've Been Some Changes in the
World of Sports (New York: Thomas Nelson 6 Sons, 1962),
pp. 6-7.

2Tom Meany, Babe Ruth (New York: A. S. Barnes and
Co., 1947), p. lSOn.

 

 

25

the league championship and to victory in the World Series

against the Giants.

~

Both the New York Times and the Detroit Times

 

appeared satisfied by August, 1923, that Ruth was sincere
in his pledge to reform. Occasional references to his
change in attitude appeared in both newspapers, but the
subject of his behavior of the previous season was ap-
proached gently. The two newspapers appeared happy to be
able to report good news rather than bad news about the
Yankee star.

Only once did the New York Times question Ruth's
attitude. In a game on August 1, Ruth had been given a
base on balls twice in succession by an overly cautious
pitcher and, in disgust, had thrown his bat through the
air and into the Yankee dugout--a dangerous and careless
stunt. A reporter for the Iimg§--whose writers were not
awarded by-lines in 1923--scolded Ruth for the incident,
reminding that, "Such displays of temper were common last
year, but this season the Bambino has been on his good
behavior . . . the act created a ripple of comment in the
stands."3

If the remark was intended to be a slap on the

wrist of Ruth, however, it was more than tempered by the

 

3"Caught at the Plate," New York Times, Aug- 2,
1923, p. 12.

26

manner in which the story of the game itself was written.
The Yankees had lost the game to the Cleveland Indians,
but Ruth had provided New York fans with some excitement
when he hit his twenty-fifth home run of the season in the
final inning. Ruth's home run, it was written, "turned
the dirge of 12,000 fans into a paean of joy." The writer
continued that:

The Indians were leading by five runs to one and the
fans were wondering if they hadn't just as well give
it up and go home.. Only the fact that Ruth was to
have one more chance at the fast-breaking, left-hand
curve of the venerable Sherry Smith kept the crowd
from already belated dinners.

In his four previous trips to the plate Babe had
not done so well. A strikeout, a high fly and two
bases on balls were already set off against his name
for the afternoon, but the fans still clung to the
belief that he would do better, and so he did. . . .
There was that well-known crack which comes when Babe
hits one on the nose, and the triumphant procession
of the bases was under way. By the time Babe had
reached second the ball had come to rest far up in
the bleachers and the crowd was at liberty to turn
its undivided attention to Ruth and we come him in
a fitting manner. This it did . . .

For the remainder of the season there was little

question that the New York Times was solidly in Ruth's

 

camp. After a spectacular performance in a game on
August 30, a Times reporter wrote that:

Anybody who thinks that the Babe isn't the best player
in present day baseball would get a stiff argument from
12,000 [crowd] of yesterday. What Ruth didn't do in
hitting he did on the base lines where his daring .
running completely upset the Senators in the sixth.

 

4"Ruth Hits His 25th, But Yanks Lose, 5-3," ibid.,
Aug. 2, 1923, p. 12.

27

Fielding chances were few . . . but it might be observed

. . that when Joe Judge singled to right in the sixth
and tried to take an extra base he found Ruth's perfect
throw waiting for him.

Later in the season, with the start of the World

Series imminent, the New York Times commented that Ruth

 

could play no better role than to climax his fine season

by shaking off his reputation for mediocrity in the post-

season tournament. A Times reporter wrote that:

the

For two years the Bambino has been the subject of most
of the pre-series speculation . . . and it has been
predicted that as the Babe goes so the Yanks will go.
But for two years also Ruth has been what the trade
calls a "bust," and, last year particularly, instead
of being a towering figure he was a towering failure.
Yet the old prophesy cannot be avoided, and so it is
set down that more interest will concentrate on Ruth,
more people around the country will watch Ruth's every
move, than will be the case with any other player on
either team.

For one thing, he has "come back," got into condi-
tion, steadied down and made himself undoubtedly the
greatest player in the game. . . . Ruth has been an
emphatic success, and people will watch to see if the
underdog of 1922 can be the star of 1923.6

Ruth hit two home runs in one of the early games of

1923 series, prompting a Times reporter to write that

he finally had Showed that the Giants were not invincible

and

that:

Ruth was a tonic for a jaded group of athletes who, if
they had lost yesterday, almost certainly would have
skidded downward to the depths that they reached in
1922.

 

Aug.

Oct.

5"Ruth Gets 3 Hits As Yanks Win, 4-3," ibid.,
31, 1923, p. 11.

6"Baseball's Classic Begins Wednesday," ibid-,
7, 1923, sec. 1, part 2, pp. 1, 4.

28

The same reporter took particular delight in describing the
first of the two home runs, finishing his account in a
manner calculated to endear the Yankee player to baseball
fans everywhere:

It was a real home run. It went high in the air,

cleared the ledge of the grand stand, cleared the roof

and fell far away in Manhattan Field, which adjoins

the Polo Grounds [Giants' home park]. When the ball

lighted, a policeman picked it up, stuck it into his

pocket and probably took it home to his children, to

let them treasure it as the ball with which Babe Ruth

made baseball history. . .

As he circled the baSeS he wOre a grin from ear to ear,

and when he reached the plate and touched it he lifted

his cap and waved it as a boy would wave it at the

thousands who were shouting, screaming and clapping

in enthusiasm.7

Strangely, the Times stepped out of character once

during the World Series in a story that may have been
written by a reporter not usually assigned to cover the
Yankees. In the final game of the series, won by the
Yankees for their first so-called "world championship,"
Ruth had failed to drive home the winning run in a crucial
situation for his team. A teammate succeeded where Ruth
had failed, and the reporter felt compelled to point out
the significance of that moment: "Babe Ruth came up to
face his greatest opportunity of the series," he wrote

The 34,172 rose in their seats and pleaded for a

home run, a triple, even a single--and then the Babe
struck out!

 

7"Ruth's Two Homers Win for Yanks, 4-2, And Tie
The Series," ibid., Oct. 12, 1923, pp. 1, 3.

29

It didn't check the Yankees, but it did make Ruth
again the big failure of the series. With all his home
runs, and his fielding and his batting . . . Ruth failed
pitifully in the biggest crisis of all. Of all the
Yankee players, he figured the slightest in the final
victory that brought the title.8

On the whole, however, the New York Times found
Ruth as irresistible in 1923 as the writers of sports publi-
cations today find him.

Insofar as the city of Detroit was concerned, Ruth
was a particularly attractive figure in 1923. His exciting
batting race with Heilmann of the Tigers was not decided
until the late stages of the season. He also was guest of
honor at the banquet of a local youth organization to which

he had contributed.

The Detroit Times was kind to Ruth, remembering

 

occasionally that he had been a "bad boy" the previous
season but indicating a willingness to believe in him as

a man of basic goodness. Writers for the Detroit paper
went out of their way to picture Ruth in a favorable

light, considering that their own man, Heilmann, was
bidding for his first batting championship and obviously
would finish the season with a spectacular batting average,

win or lose. Not that Heilmann suffered from lack of

 

8"Yanks Win Title; 6-4 Victory Ends $1,063,815
Series," ibid., Oct. 16, 1923, pp. 1, 16.

30

sports page exposure, but Ruth enjoyed such endorsements as
one in early August that declared:

Ruth's average being .389 indicates how the Yankee
slugger has gradually forged to the top. That it was
in him, most observers believed, but they did not
think that Babe would forego his swing in order to get
a high average.

Reports of every game indicate that Ruth is playing
the greatest ball of his career, both offensively and
defensively. With Heilmann slipping as he is, there
seems to be no good reason why Ruth should not take
command at the top.

Another endorsement came in late September, on the occasion
of the 1923 Most Valuable Player announcement. The news
should not have come as a surprise in any sports-conscious
section of the nation, but Detroiters may be presumed to
have been hoping the honor would go to Heilmann. The story
reporting the news said, in part:

Babe Ruth has earned his reward. Yesterday he was
voted the most valuable player to his team in the
American League. .

Babe earned the honor after one of the most
surprising reversals in form in the history of base-
ball. Last year he did not receive a single vote
Last year he was suspended at the beginning of the
season and drew one or two more suspensions during the
season for temperamental outbursts. The result was
that he was somewhat of a "dud."

This year it has been different. He has played

for the good of the team, forgetting self-glory in his
ambition to help the Yankees as much as possible.1

 

9"Famous New York Slugger Proving Worth by Sport,"
Detroit Times, Aug. 5, 1923, sec. 3, p. 6.

10"Ruth Named Most Valuable Player," iEiQL»
Sept. 22, 1923, p. 12.

 

31

Two other specifics of Detroit Times coverage of

 

Ruth and his exploits need to be mentioned. The first is
that H. C. "Bert" Walker, a Times baseball writer, appeared
to have a special fondness for Ruth as a man that may have
outweighed his admiration for Ruth as an athlete. The
second is that the Times relied heavily on the nationally
distributed sports columns of Damon Runyon and Davis J.
Walsh, sports editor of the Hearst-owned International

News Service. Both men, based in New York, wrote with a
sophistication not always found in the stories of local
reporters, and a certain cynicism characterized many of
their columns. Ruth's image fared less well at their hands.

Walker took pleasure in humanizing the Ruthian

image. When the Yankee player appeared with Heilmann at
a banquet of the Detroit chapter of the Young Men's Order
in August, 1923, Walker covered the event and filed a
lengthy and flattering story that said, in part:
He [Ruth] paid a high tribute to his friend and rival,
as well as extolling the virtues of the Y. M. O.,
which . . . gave the banquet in honor of Heilmann and
Ruth, both of whom are members of the order. Ruth
made a tremendous impression . . . He complimented
the Y. M. O. in having the nerve to start and carry
to a successful conclusion an order the watchword of
which was the improvement of young men.

Ruth and Heilmann sat side by side in fine compan-
ionship, forgetful of the fact that they are deadly
rivals on the field. Their presence together impressed
the young men who make up the membership of the organi-

zation as being a fine exemplification of the true ideal
of splendid sportsmanship 11

 

11Bert Walker, "Ruth's Best Player, Says Heilmann,"
ibid., Aug. 24, 1923, p. 25.

32

In a column shortly after the 1923 World Series,
Walker related a story from the Yankee locker room after
the game in which Ruth hit the two home runs. Walker did
not say so in his column, but his account suggests that he
may have witnessed what happened.

One of Ruth's two home runs had been retrieved by
a small boy who, said Walker, "idolized the Babe" and
returned the ball to him, thinking Ruth might want it as
a souvenir. Ruth gave the boy a five-dollar bill and took
back the ball. Later, a representative of the Detroit
Young Men's Organization, whose guest Ruth had been earlier
in the season, approached the Yankee player to ask if Ruth
might donate some personal item to a fund-raising auction
the organization was planning in order that its services
might be expanded. Ruth gave the man the baseball he had
just paid $5 to re-acquire and the bat with which he had
hit it, and then autographed both items.

Walker quoted Ruth as saying, "I wouldn't give them
to anybody else, but the Detroit Y. M. O. and the boys they
are trying to help make a hit with me." A curiosity seeker,
Walker wrote, had offered Ruth $1,000 for the ball and bat

an hour earlier.12

 

12Bert Walker, "Sportology," ibid., Oct. 24, 1923,

p. 24.

33

It would be difficult to prove that Runyon or Walsh
were determined to discount Ruth as an important element in
the 1923 World Series; however, neither was carried away
with his potential for stardom. Ruth was given his due,
but Runyon, particularly, had to retreat from the position
he had staked out in advance of the series.

Walsh wrote in a pre-series report that:

One year ago . . . Ruth was the sap. Will history
repeat itself at the expense of the new Ruth?

Ruth was recognized as a vast success in 1921, and
somewhat less so in 1922, what with suspensions and
indiscreet training. . . . He was at the crest of his
popularity and ability on each occasion, yet in two
short series he was made to look the part of the veri-
est busher.1

Runyon was somewhat more definite in his pre-series
speculation than was Walsh. It was his prediction that
Ruth would fail again, and he wrote, in part:

The writer does not attach as much importance to Babe
Ruth as others, including [Miller] Huggins, manager of
the Yankees.

Huggins is quoted as saying, "It is all up to Ruth."
He is one man among nine. Unless the other eight men
do their full share, Ruth's efforts will amount to
little.

The writer is inclined to think that the responsi-
bility placed on Ruth, and the fact that he has failed
in the preceding series, may have an effect on Ruth's
playing.

It may make him over anxious. He will be trying
so hard that it may be too hard. They are starting
Ruth off with a considerable handicap.

 

13Davis J. Walsh, "Babe Now Scientific and Exact
with Bat," ibid., Oct. 7, 1923, sec. 3, p. 3.

14Damon Runyon, "'Dope' Not Always Trustworthy,"
ibid., Oct. 10, 1923, p. 19.

34

After the game in which Ruth hit his two home runs,
however, Runyon was less disposed to doubt his ability to
play well under pressure. "Ruth was Ruth, mammoth, majestic;'
Runyon wrote after the game, adding:

That is the curious thing about Ruth's home run hitting--
his home runs always seem more terrific than any other
home runs, though they may be hit no farther or harder.
It would be 'ust as easy to pick Aaron Ward's home
run as the one tNat won the game for the Yanks . . .
but Ruth's two home runs will be remembered long after
Ward's one has been forgotten.
That is another thing about Ruth's home runs--they
are always the ones that seem to count the most.

A heavy handicap was placed on the big hitter when
it was said before the series started that it was "all
up to Ruth." 15
He met his handicap today and overcame it grandly.
It is, of course, not fair to judge any writer or
any newspaper on the strength of two, isolated columns.
Anyone, even writers who put themselves on record, is
entitled to an occasional misjudgment, and the aforemen-
tioned columns may not have been typical of all that Walsh
and Runyon wrote about Ruth. Nor, for that matter, were
all newspapers necessarily as respectful of Babe Ruth after

his disappointing year in 1922 as were the New York Times

and the Detroit Times. The Yankee star, after all, was
16

 

earning an income of $52,000 a year; and it is conceivable

 

15Damon Runyon, "Brute Force Beats Master Mind,"
ibid., Oct. 12, 1923, p. 31.

16"Babe Ruth Signs for Three Years at Toss of a
Coin," New York Times, March 6, 1922, p. l.

 

35

that some thought a measure of responsibility, even from a
Babe Ruth, was inherent in so high a salary.

Ruth, however, did mend his ways in 1923 and it
seems safe to say that, in varying degrees of strength, he
had the backing of the two newspapers and of the men whose
stories and columns appeared in them. Even the most con-
servative audit would have to conclude that Ruth finished
the 1923 season with his heroic image substantially un-

damaged.

Only two years later, however, Ruth put the baseball
world and the sportswriters to another test, in many re-
spects a far more serious one than that of 1923.

Prior to the start of the 1925 season he became
gravely ill, collapsing in public on two occasions, and
spending many weeks in North Carolina and New York hospi-
tals. He did not play his first game of the season until
early June, almost two months after the season had begun;
and even when he did return to action it was apparent he
would not have a successful year; nor did he. I

Ruth failed to play well for days at a time; his
batting and fielding both were below par. By late August,
however, there were positive signs of improvement. Then,

suddenly, the news was made public that Ruth had been

36

fined $5,000 and suspended indefinitely for misconduct on
and off the field. The fine still stands as one of the
largest in baseball history.

Every indication is that the sports public was
taken completely by surprise by the news. Again, news-
paper sports departments were faced with a dilemma, further
complicated by the fact that Ruth was then thirty years
old, an age at which most men are presumed mature enough
to avoid the types of pitfalls that were commonplace with
Ruth.

By virtue of the fact that Ruth played for a New
York team, the Iim£§_of that city, in the weeks leading to
his suspension, was interesting reading. A careful reading
was not required to detect the disenchantment of James R.
Harrison, the Iimgg reporter who covered the Yankees, with
Ruth. Harrison's descriptions of Ruth's twelfth and thir-
teenth home runs of the season are indicative of his
attitude. Of the twelfth, Harrison wrote:

Babe Ruth annoyed the small . . . audience of 5,000 by
hitting his twelfth homer of the season. "Annoyed" is
the prOper word. The fans hooted George every time he

came to bat and were so chagrined when he pasted the
ball for the full circuit that they forgot to cheer him.

For Ruth it is a long time between drinks at the
home run fountain. Today's was his first in about
three weeks.17

 

17James R. Harrison, "Ruth's Home Run Revives
Yankees," ibid., Aug. 19, 1925, p. 15.

37

Of his thirteenth, Harrison filed this description:
Ruth's home run was his thirteenth of the season. This
time a year ago he had swatted about three times thir-
teen, but why dwell on the glories of a dead past?18
To construe such obviously unenthusiastic accounts
as anything but one man's disenchantment, however, is to
find significance where there was none. The Iimgg took
no editorial stand against Ruth's substandard play. Nor
was there an apparent anti-Ruth climate in other news-

papers of the day. The Times morning rival in New York,

the Herald-Tribune, betrayed no overt attempt to discredit

 

the Yankee player. The celebrated Sports columnists,
Grantland Rice and W. O. McGeehan of the Herald-Tribune,

in fact, already were looking ahead to another Ruth come-
back in 1926. Rice, citing Ruth's infamous weight problem,
wrote that, "There are many who believe the Babe is about
through, but there is no reason for any such belief, if he
has learned his lesson . . . he may still return to the
throne which he had to surrender this spring and summer."19
McGeehan acknowledged that Ruth was having a bad season but
added that, "It is not the end of Ruth . . . He has many

more years to go . . . There is another comeback in him.

 

18James R. Harrison, "Yankees Set Back Third Time
in Row," ibid., Aug. 23, 1925, sec. 9, p. l.

19Grantland Rice, "The Sportlight," New York Herald-
Tribune, Aug. 14, 1925, p. 12.

38

He will continue to be an asset to the Yankees for several

years to come."20

Harrison, of the New York Times, in fact, appears

 

to have been pulled off the story of Ruth's fine and suspen-
sion when the news was announced on August 30. The Yankees
were in St. Louis, at the conclusion of a road trip, when
the story broke. Ruth left the team immediately after some
well-aimed verbal blasts at the Yankees manager, Miller
Huggins, and announced he would go to Chicago to appeal to
the commissioner of baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis,
and then to New York to plead his case before the owner of
the team. Reporter Harrison, meanwhile, if he followed the
usual procedure for baseball writers, probably accompanied
the Yankee team by train back to New York. In any event,

he did not earn another by-line for a story concerning Ruth
until September 8, the day after Ruth had been permitted to
return to the Yankee lineup.

As might be imagined, an enormous volume of stories,
columns, and editorials appeared in the New York papers
when the story-broke and continued for weeks afterward; a
tribute, if nothing else, to Ruth's popularity and to his
importance to the sports world.

The New York Times strived hard to remain objective.

 

On August 30 an Associated Press story from St. Louis

 

20w. o. McGeehan, "Down the Line," ibid., Aug. 18,
1925, p. 15.

39

announced only the bare details of the fine and suspension,
but the paper localized the story almost as though it were
printing Ruth's obituary. After pointing out that the fine
was a baseball record and that the portion of the salary he
forfeited under the terms of the suspension was more than
many other players received for an entire season's play,
the Iimg§_story recalled Ruth's troubled childhood years in
a Baltimore orphanage, his sale to the Yankees by the Boston
Red Sox, and his amazing home run records of previous
years.21

On August 31 the Iimgg editorialized, on the sports
page, that while it was true that Ruth had customarily
"snapped his fingers at discipline" both he and the Yankees
had a new seasOn to look forward to and that "the process
of rejuvination will have to include a strict adherence to
training rules."22

It was characteristic of the Timgg approach to the
story that when it determined that a point or points needed
to be raised about the disciplinary action or Ruth's base-

ball future, or both, those points were made to seem to

have come from baseball men "on the inside."

 

21"Ruth Fined $5,000; Costly Star Banned for Acts
Off Field," New York Times, Aug. 30, 1925, pp. 1, 3.

22"This Week in Sports," ibid., Aug- 31» 1925:

p. 12.

\

40

One such point was that there must have been some
justification for the harsh penalty or the Yankee manager,

23 There were, after

Huggins, wouldn't have inflicted it.
all, Ruth's many fans to consider; they should understand
that he was far from perfect; that he was more than capable
of serious indiscretions. Then, too, the Yankee team still
was en route to New York from St. Louis and all the facts
were not yet in. In the meantime, manager Huggins deserved
the benefit of the doubt.

Another point was that, in the long run, the most
realistic solution to the situation would be for Ruth to
take his medicine and apologize.24 He was still bound to
the Yankees by a lucrative, three-year contract and his
selling or trading price to another team defied contempla-
tion. He could, of course, retire from baseball, but where
else could he command such a salary?

Still another point, and perhaps the crucial one,
was whether Ruth really could make his peace with the

25 He had accused Huggins of incompetency and the

Yankees.
accusation had reached print. And he had attempted to go

over Huggins' head to have the penalties rescinded by the

 

23"Ruth Will Quit if Huggins Remains Manager; To
Put Case Before Landis," ibid., Aug. 31, 1925, p. 11.

24"Ruppert Declares Huggins Will Stay," ibi§;:
Sept. 1, 1925, p. 15.

25Ibid., p. 15.

41

owner of the team, without success. Moreover, there were
the attitudes of Ruth's teammates to be considered. They
had been witnesses to his actions and they would have to
play beside him again if and when he was reinstated.

By seeking out "informed baseball men" on these
points, the Iim::_demonstrated a number of effective and
intelligent judgments. First, it avoided unnecessarily
taking sides in a difficult issue where more was involved
than the principle of who was right and who was wrong.
Ruth was at the peak of his career; his retirement might
have done irreparable harm to the game of baseball, not
to mention the Yankees' future championship hOpes. The
liggg was, after all, a New York newspaper and probably not
without some hopes of its own for a Yankee championship.
Successful teams, as a rule, are more interesting to cover
than are unsuccessful teams. Second, a certain editorial
dignity and integrity were maintained. A series of well-
meaning and astute, but perhaps over-zealous, little
editorial comments, on the sports page or elsewhere, might
have cheapened or at least inflamed the entire issue.
Third, even if the limp: had correctly guessed that Ruth
eventually would capitulate, which he did, it would have
been unseemly to suggest it in print. Ruth might have
changed his mind at the last minute out of spite, or the
Yankees might have decided to sell or trade him for the

same reason. And, fourth, the dignity of both sides of

42

the issue was preserved, even if the limp: objective may
have been a selfish one. Regardless of the outcome of the
matter, the limp: still would need free access to the
Yankee clubhouse and executive offices in the months and
years ahead. Ruth, if he did apologize and eventually
return to action, one day would be worthy of individual
attention of a more positive nature. Cordial relations

at a trying time such as this undoubtedly would have a
positive influence on future COOperation between him and
limp: representatives.

Only after Ruth had been reinstated and was playing
again did the limp: resume identifying reporter Harrison as
the author of stories about the controversial player.
Harrison was not so quick to forgive and forget, although
in view of the fact that he traveled with the Yankee team
and had the Opportunity to witness Ruth's behavior first-
hand his reaction was both understandable and predictable.
Not that Harrison was vindictive, but his stories made it
plain that he thought at least one watchful eye ought to
be kept on the Yankee player to be sure he appeared prOperly
contrite. A story from Boston, for example, pictured Ruth's
return to the lineup in fair, if unflattering, terms.
Harrison wrote:

there was no fatted calf for the prodigal son. No

gala celebration, no scenes of triumph. As the wanderer
came back to the fold, the Yanks' four-game winning

streak shriveled up and died.

43

Miller Huggins and George Herman shook hands before
the game but only for the cameras.

Whatever else one may say about Ruth, he likes his
baseball. He was the first man in uniform this afteg-
noon, and the flrst on the fleld by several minutes.

Two days later, after Ruth committed a fielding

error in the final inning of another game in Boston to lose
the game for the Yankees, Harrison was critical of the play
and made it the main point of his story, but his words
probably were no more harsh than they would have been had
Ruth not recently been in trouble. "By the grace of Babe
Ruth, the Red Sox won the last game of the New York series
today," Harrison wrote. "To err is human and nobody ever
charged George with not being human. He dozed at the wrong
time and the Sox swarmed past him for a victory."27

And when Ruth finally played his first game in

New York after the suspension, Harrison wrote that his
reception was unenthusiastic, if cordial. "First of all,
only 10,000 were sufficiently interested in Ruth's return
from Siberia to hike to the Yankee Stadium," the story
said:
New York refused to get all worked up over a revolt
against the august authority of Miller Huggins

Still it was a positive reception. No hoots, no groans,
no pungent remarks.

 

26James R. Harrison, "Ruth Back in Fold, But Yanks
Lose, 5-1," ibid., Sept. 8, 1925, p. 24.

27James R. Harrison, "Red Sox Get Last AS Babe Takes
-Nap," ibid., Sept. 10, 1925, p. 20.

28James R. Harrison, "Yanks Weakly Box to Red Sox
Hurler," ibid., Sept. 14, 1925, p. 23.

44

On the whole, the New York Times manifested a

 

responsible attitude toward Babe Ruth and treated him with
more understanding than he may have deserved in 1925.
Ruth's behavior and performance were not those of a hero,
but the limp: managed to preserve for him a generous share
of the dignity a hero ought to command.

The flamboyance that had been expected of the

Detroit Times came to the surface in the case of Babe Ruth's

 

1925 suspension and fine, yet the newspaper's approach to
the story was curiously ambivalent. Its own participation
in an annual Babe Ruth All-American Baseball team contest
unquestionably restricted the latitude to which the sports
department could go in emphasizing the misconduct story.
Throughout most of his active career, Ruth's name
appeared above a baseball column syndicated by the Christy
Walsh enterprises. Walsh doubled as Ruth's financial
adviser. Ruth did not actually write the column; it was
ghost-written for him by a number of different newspapermen,
as was the case with many other famous athletes. Paul
Gallico referred to the phenomenon of the "literary athlete
who, even before he had rinsed the sweat from his body in
the showers, was supposed to have rushed to his typewriter
and indited an intimate, inside, personal account of just

29

how he had done it." In connection with the Ruth column,

 

29Gallico, The Golden People, p. 28.

 

45

those newspapers in which it was printed were supposed to
conduct an annual contest for their readers. Readers were
to submit their guesses for an All-America baseball team of
active players--the guesses to be compared with Babe Ruth's
own selections. All‘active players were eligible to be
picked, with the exception of Ruth himself. In 1925, the
contest was due to close the day after Ruth's fine and
suspension were announced and $500 in local prize money

was at stake.

With the contest deadline imminent, the Detroit
limp: preferred to use the story of the suspension on page
one. First announcement of the penalty was played as the
lead story, and the story remained on the front page for
four days. On August 31 the lead story, under an eight-
column banner headline, with a New York dateline, and the
by-line of one James Whittaker, declared that:

A pitiful, homeless vagabond, unwilling to return here,
"Boob" Ruth faced today exposure of withheld truths
about the riotous life course which has reduced him in
five years from king of baseball to a discredited pre-
tender to the envied title.
The story, sensational and irresponsible on its face, impli-
cated Ruth not only with a lengthy past history of willful
disregard for discipline, but also with alleged adulterous
behavior with women in a number of southern cities, and
with an attempt to assault Yankee manager Huggins in public

in a Savannah, Georgia, railroad station. A divorce action

by Mrs. Ruth was hinted, and, the story continued, the

46

staff of the New York hotel in which the Ruths lived "was
not surprised by the St. Louis news."30

The logical conclusion would seem to be that the
story was not the product of a sportswriter. A responsible
sportswriter presumably would have realized Ruth's value to
the sports world and thus would not have subjected him to
the disclosure of events in his personal life, at least
not in print. It is difficult to rationalize the use of
the story by the limp: on any other grounds than that
sensational news concerning well-known figures from many
other walks of life was highly prized by its editors.

The damage done by Whittaker's story, however, may
have been negligible. Historically, it would seem that
Ruth always did himself more harm than was done by stories
written about him. Just two days later, as it develOped,
a story from New York by the fast-rising sportswriter
Bill Corum doubtless eased the minds of Detroit readers.
Ruth had reached New York and had apologized to the Yankee
management for his conduct. He had not yet been forgiven
for his sins and Corum was off base with his prediction
that Ruth would be back in the lineup within three days,
but the impact of the story was nonetheless positive.

Corum wrote that:

 

30James Whittaker, "Babe Ruth, Ousted, Faces
Divorce," Detroit Times, Aug. 31, 1925, pp. 1-2.

 

47

The Monarch of Swat bent the knee. Babe Ruth was hanging
around the Yankee Stadium this morning waiting for a
signal from Miller Huggins to jump into a uniform again.
Ruth not only repented, he broke all existing
records repenting.

Thus, the little act is nearing its final cur—
tain. . . . It will finish another chapter in the
romantic life story of Babe Ruth.

You can't get away from Ruth. Suspended or playing,
sick or well, hitting or missing, he remains the grgit
single figure in the sporting life of this country.

There was further reassurance from Corum the follow-
ing day in a story that read, in part:

The verdict will be handed down Saturday afternoon
before an interested gathering of Yankee players and
newspapermen. At that time Huggins no doubt will
demand a formal and semi-public apology from the Babe,
to follow one that has already been made in private.

If the apology is satisfactory, as it is reason-
ably sure to be, Ruth will be allowed to put on his
uniform and play. . . . The $5,000 is expected to
stand, temporarily at least, as a guarantee that Ruth
keeps the profuse promises he has made since he saw
the light and hit the sawdust trail to baseball re-
demption.32

For all practical purposes, the Detroit Times lost
interest in the Ruth story at that point, and its local
writers never did see a need to lend their own opinions in
the matter. Besides, their minds were elsewhere. Their
own team, the Tigers, was playing far better baseball at

the time than were the Yankees, and the Tigers' star

 

31M. W. Corum, "Ruth May Play on Saturday,” ibid.,
Sept. 2, 1925, pp. 1, 2.

32M. W. Corum, "Ruth Verdict on Saturday," ibid.,
Sept. 3, 1925, p. 24.

48

player, Heilmann, was well on his way to another league
batting championship. Moreover, the city of Detroit had
chosen the same date Ruth's suspension was announced to
officially honor the legendary Ty Cobb, long a brilliant
player, for his twenty years of service to the Tigers. The
image of Babe Ruth may have suffered in Detroit as a result,

but only in comparison.

Simply put, the story of Babe Ruth in 1927 is told
by a two-digit statistic--sixty home runs. He and the
Yankees were virtually invincible in 1927. The team often
has been referred to as the best in baseball history.

Ruth had hit fifty-nine home runs in 1921 and many,
if not most, baseball observers went on record with the
prediction that the record would stand forever. When he
hit his sixtieth in 1927 it is safe to say that he charmed
the sports world, if not the entire nation.

In those days, unlike the present, only ten cities
were represented in both major leagues of baseball, and
all were located in the area bounded by St. Louis on the
west, Washington, D. C., on the south, and Boston on the
north. Furthermore, almost half of the cities were repre-
sented by weak teams, so that there was an even narrower

concentration of the vital dynamics of the game. Such a

49

narrow frame of reference was made to order for a player of
Ruth's stature. If the public in most sections of the
country couldn't watch the Yankee player in action, at least
it could share in his achievements from a distance, unre-
stricted by loyalties to teams in their own areas. As Ruth
came ever nearer to his record it probably is safe to say
that a majority of Americans counted themselves among his
well-wishers. He was a winner and one of the oldest cliches
in sports is that everybody loves a winner.

In short, Babe Ruth was fun to think about, and,
for sportswriters, fun to write about. The challenge lay
not in creating an identity for the man--he already was
a hero and his stock in trade, the home run, was easily
identifiable by millions of people--but in embellishing
it. New superlatives were necessary because the old ones
no longer were adequate. Writers of the New York Times
met the challenge with enthusiasm.

The New York Times began to monitor Ruth's progress

 

after-the games of September 6 and 7, in which he hit a
combined five home-runs to raise his total for the season
to forty-nine. At that point the Yankee star needed eleven
home runs in twenty-two days to set another record, and he
still was locked with teammate Lou Gehrig in a two-man race
for the home-run leadership of the American League.
Coverage of Yankee games was the responsibility of

one John Drebinger who filed flowery and involved stories.

50

After a game in Boston in which Ruth had hit three home
runs, Drebinger wrote that:

The reign of a great monarch was being seriously
threatened here this afternoon when the king himself
rose in his wrath, struck three mighty blows in his

own behalf . . . and removed all doubt . . . that for
the moment at least the master home-run swatter of 33
the age still is George Herman Ruth, called the Babe.

The following day, after Ruth hit two more, Drebinger's
story said, in part, "The king was still running rampant
here today . . . Serious thought is even now being given to

the possibility of Ruth surpassing his world's record of

fifty-nine."34

With three games left in the regular season Ruth
still needed three home runs to break the record, and
Drebinger wrote that

Babe Ruth is set, ready, and on edge for a last
supreme effort that he confidently hopes will send
him blazing to a new home run record before the final
bell sounds on the American League campaign.

There is no denying that the Babe has his heart set
on a new record and wants it badly. Back in 1921
experts were free in predicting that the record, unless
surpassed at once in the year or two to follow by Ruth
himself, doubtless would stand for many years. As
season after season rolled by with the Babe, as well
as all others, failing to approach the mark the critics
were convinced that the high-water mark in home run
hitting had been reached.

But today, six years later, finds the Babe standing
on the threshold of topping that great record. It has

 

33John Drebinger, "Yanks Break Even; Ruth Hits 3,
Gehrig 1," New York Times, Sept. 7, 1927, p. 23.

34John Drebinger, "Ruth Hits 48th, 49th As Yanks
Sweep On," ibid., Sept. 8, 1927, p. 30.

 

51

been an arduous campaign and Ruth himself realizes quite
fully that the breaks of the game may never afford him
another Opportunity of getting that close to the mark
again. Hence the zeal with which the Babe will be
taking his cuts at the ball in this final three-game
series.3

When Ruth tied his own record Drebinger was chal-
lenged to new heights of description. His story said, in
part:

Then the fifty-ninth! That, countrymen, was a
wallop! . .4.

The ball landed halfway up the right field bleach-
ers and though there were scarcely 7,500 eyewitnesses
present the roar they sent up could hardly have been
drowned out had the spacious stands been packed to
capacity. The crowd fairly rent the air with shrieks

and whistles as the bulky monarch jogged majestically
around the bases . . . . 6

The story was embellished with an eight-column banner head-
line, a two-column, ten-inch-deep picture of Ruth, and a
chart illustrating how his 1927 record compared with that
of 1921.

That, however, was as excited as the New York Times
felt compelled to be. When Ruth hit his sixtieth the story
was short, less than a full column, and no by-line was
awarded, although the style was unmistakably Drebinger's.
At a glance, the uninitiated would not have guessed that

one of the most significant events in the history of sport

35John Drebinger, "Ruth's Heart Set on New Homer
Mark," ibid., Sept. 29, 1927, p. 20.

36John Drebinger, "Ruth Hits 2, Equals 1921 Homer
Record," ibid., Sept. 30, 1927, p. 18.

52

had taken place, so anti—climatic did the limp: presentation
seem. The story did indicate that, "Babe Ruth scaled the
hitherto unattained heights yesterday," and that "Home run
60 [was] a terrific smash," but the writer almost seemed

to have taken his cue from the fact that a relatively small
crowd--10,000 persons for a Friday afternoon game-~was on
hand for the event, rather below what might have been
logically expected. There was apparently no attempt made
to ask Ruth what emotion or sensation he experienced once
he realized the hit was a home run, a practice that is
almost a ritual in sports journalism circles today.
Instead, as was common in both the New York Times and in

the Detroit Times, the reporting seemed flavored with an

 

air of distance and an aloofness that sportswriters wished
could have been otherwise. Ruth was described as having
"jogged around slowly" and having "punctuated his kingly
strides with a succession of snappy military salutes"
while hats were tossed into the air, papers were torn up,
handkerchiefs were waved, and a carnival spirit prevailed.
Otherwise, according to the story, "There was not much
else.to the game."37

It was left to the Times sports columnist, John

Kieran, to place the event in its proper perspective the

37"Ruth Crashes 60th to Set New Record," ibid-,
Oct. 1, 1927, p. 12.

53

following day. Unlike the story of the game, Kieran's

column was the stuff of which heroes and legends were made.

He wrote that:

What this big, good- natured, uproariOus lad has done
is little short of a miracle of sport. .

Supposedly "over the hill, " slipping down the steps
of Time, stumbling toward the discard, six years past
his peak, Babe Ruth stepped out and hung up a new home
run record at which all the sport world may stand and

wonder. . .
Put it in the book in letters of gold. It will be

a long time before anyone else betters that home run
mark, and a still longer time before any aging athlete
makes such a gallant comeback and glorious charge over

the comeback trail.38

Kieran was not with the New York Times in 1925 when
Ruth was fined and suspended, and one wonders how he might
have approached the story if he had been. Like Bert Walker
of Detroit before him, Kieran seemed to value Ruth the man
more highly than Ruth the athlete. This was particularly
evident in columns that were printed after the 1927 base-
ball season. Kieran did not begin his "Sports of the limp:"
column until January 1, 1927, to combat the highly popular

two-column format--Grantland Rice and W. O. McGeehan--of

39

the rival New York Herald-Tribune. Although Ruth by then

had long been recognized as a star of no ordinary magnitude,
.Kieran seemed bent on clarifying and burnishing his image.
lie once wrote of an occasion on which Ruth had passed up a

gparty that had been organized for the purpose of listening

¥

38John Kieran, "Sports of the Times," ibid., Oct. 2,
1927, sec. 10, p. 2.

39Kieran, Not Under Oath, p. 38.

54

to the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney boxing championship match
on radio to attend a small charity bazaar sponsored by a
local church. Ruth "autographed and auctioned half a dozen
baseballs" and "spent his money generously at all the
booths," Kieran wrote, and by the time he reached the party
the fight was over.40
Kieran thought that Ruth was a hero because "he

approximates what the public thinks a ball player should
be." The public, he wrote

. . . thinks that Babe Ruth is just about perfect.

"here," they say, "is a real guy. . . . He spends too

much and eats too much and gets into trouble every so

often, but we like him."41

An axiom of long standing in sports is that a great

athlete who performs for a New York team is destined to
become known as a superstar while a great athlete who per-
forms anywhere else will remain merely a great athlete.
The examples are virtually countless; three of recent
vintage are Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle of baseball and
Joe Namath of professional football. The implication is
obvious; New York teams have the benefit of the sophisti-
cated, influential, and powerful communications media

behind them. A clue to the origin of the axiom might well

'have been the decision of the New York Times in 1927 to

40John Kieran, "Sports of the Times," New York Times,
C)ct. 26, 1927, p. 35.

41Ibid., Dec. 8, 1927, p. 39.

55

begin a sports column to compete with those of a rival news-
paper, the Herald-Tribune, some 85,575 copies42 less widely
read than itself. With their images in the hands of com-
peting columnists such as Kieran and Rice, who once wrote
that, "pure, warm, unadulterated friendship with no holds
barred . . . is the key to the Babe Ruth I most treasure."43
Babe Ruth and those outstanding New York athletes who fol-
lowed him could rest easily.

In Detroit, on the other hand, the only real stake
in baseball in 1927 was to see how close the Tigers could
stay behind the dominant Yankees and to take pride in the
fact that if Harry Heilmann couldn't hit as many home runs
as Babe Ruth could at least Ruth couldn't bat for as high
an average as Heilmann could. The Tigers finished the
season in fourth place, well below the Yankees but better
than four other teams in the league. Heilmann won the
batting championship again and Ruth, for all his home runs,
was a distant sixth in that category. Thus did Detroiters
relate to Babe Ruth and the Yankees.

The Detroit Times, perhaps mirroring its community,

evinced no great surprise or admiration for Ruth's

42According to Editor 6 Publisher, July 16, 1927,
jp. 49, the circulation Offithe New York Herald-Tribune was
289,674 and that of the Times was 375,249. The difference
is 85,575.

43Rice, The Tumult and the Shouting, p. 114.

56

achievement. His progress toward the sixtieth home run, if
not exactly ignored, at least went uncharted until the
fifty-second had been hit. On that occasion, the limp:_
ran an enormous picture of Ruth in the midst of a mighty
swing with his bat. The picture appeared on the first
sports page of a Friday edition, covered eight columns,
was twelve inches deep, and was captioned only "Ruth" and
"8 More to Beat 1921 Record."
When the old record of fifty-nine was equalled

the limp: turned to a New York reporter, Robert A. Hereford
of Hearst's Universal Service, for a from-the-scene account
of the story. Hereford wrote colorfully. His story of the
tieing home runs said, in part:

With two of these wind-splitting swings which repre-

sent all that is most spectacular in baseball, Babe
lifted two more home runs into history.

A stage director could not have prepared a better
setting for the fifty-ninth big blow. There were
three men on base. Young Paul Hopkins, former col-
lege star, on the mound for the Senators, set his
teeth and with youthful determination strove to gain
fame with a strike-out over baseball's greatest
hitter.

The count was three balls and two strikes.

Zam--and Babe Ruth was back!4

(3f the sixtieth, however, a practicing poet might not have
eritten more eloquently. Hereford wrote that:
A sculptor seeking to immortalize the spirit of

baseball would have found an ideal model at the Yankee
Stadium.

44Robert A. Hereford, "Babe Ruth Equals Record,"
D_etroit Times, Sept. 30, 1927, p. 19.

 

57

A barrel- torsoed giant of a man, bat on shoulders,
balanced on legs as delicately turned as those of a
thoroughbred race horse, and poised for the blow that
was to blaze new baseball trails. .

That was Babe Ruth . . . the instant before he
lifted his sixtieth home run of the season into the
bleachers and record books

That sweeping, rhythmic swing, a sharp crack like
a pistol shot and a tiny white sphere outlined for the
moment against the darkness of the bleachers. And as
if the balooning ball had released a hidden spring, the
roar from the stands like the thundering of Niagara.

But for one further, inexplicable story long after

the baseball season ended, the Detroit Times was basically

 

Silent on the subject of Babe Ruth, excepting routine
reports of his performances in the World Series. On
December 10, however, in a notable, but strange story that
could have been designed to do little but assure readers
that Ruth had found that discipline and success do mix,
the limp: printed the following:

The secret is out at last: George Herman Ruth,

former "Bad Boy of Baseball," has got all the badness
out of his system. . . . Maybe it's the underlying
reason for the Babe's smashing of his own world record
for home runs.

Anyway, the "Big Bam" has the "goods" to prove the
truth of the revelations. The "goods" in this case are
represented by a bank account of $50, 000 and paid-up
life insurance which cost the Babe $20, 000 more.

What's more, Babe will tell you that he got more
real "kick" out of life last year than he ever did
before, in the days when it was "easy come, easy go,"
when he used to toss away $100 and $1, 000 bills on the
ponies or at poker, and sometimes tossed down drinks
ithat'Would have made Andy Volstead shiver.

No more of that for Babe. He'll tell you that he
awakened to see his own folly. He thinks more of that

 

45Robert A. Hereford, "Babe Ruth Sets New Home Run
Record," ibid., Oct. 1, 1927, pp. 9-10.

58

bank account than he does of the 60 four-baggers that

established his new record. Babe has emerged from the

i§3g34ghen he always was referred to as an "over-grown
Not well-written by critical standards, the story was unat-
tributed and was accompanied by four grotesque cartoons
depicting Ruth squandering money on horse races, playing
cards, being mobbed by a group of young boys, and deposit-
ing money at a bank window.

One's temptation is to conclude that the Detroit
limp: simply betrayed a shortage of imagination out of
character with its overall fascination with the dramatic
and the spectacular. None of its writers paid tribute
to the Yankee star, although there were potentially many
tributes that could have been written. After all, some
of those sixty home runs had been hit against the Tigers.

Perhaps it was inevitable that Ruth would succeed
in setting the new record; in his long career there were
not many situations in which he failed under pressure.
Certainly, there was no other player active in 1927 who
was more likely to hit sixty home runs than he, and of
all the baseball stories of 1927 no other may be said to

have been significantly more important; not even the

Yankees' total domination of the World Series in four

46"The Old Babe and the New Babe," ibid., Dec. 10,
1927, p. 9.

59

games against the Pittsburgh Pirates, champions of National
League. Given the logic of these observations, it may be
that the very forces that placed Ruth in position to
establish a record of such magnitude also deprived him of
systematic recognition of the achievement. In this analy-

sis, the approach of the Detroit Times was uncharacteristi-

 

cally provincial.

CHAPTER IV

By his own admission, Red Grange was almost too
small to play varsity football at a major university. As
a freshman he weighed 166 pounds1 and even as a senior his
physical dimensions--5 feet 11 inches in height and 175
pounds--were significantly below the standards generally
considered acceptable by today's college coaches. In three
varsity seasons at the University of Illinois, however,
Grange gained an astounding 4,280 yards running and passing
and scored 31 touchdowns, or 186 points. The statistics
are the more compelling because he did not contribute to
four of twenty-four games played by Illinois while he was
a player. In tribute to his excellent play Grange was
honored with All-America recognition in each of his three
seasons.

AS a SOphomore, in 1923, Grange showed in his first
varsity game that he had superior ability. Against the
University of Nebraska he scored three touchdowns and gained
202 yards running with the football, totals whose signifi-

cance is underscored by the fact that he played only

 

1Harold E. Grange, The Red Grange Story, as told to
Ira Morton (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1953), p. 31.

6O

61

thirty-nine minutes-~slightly more than half the game.

Later in the season, against Northwestern University, he
again scored three touchdowns while playing nineteen minutes.
In all, Grange scored twelve touchdowns in 1923 and gained
1,260 yards, although he did not play in one game because

he was not needed.2

Mitigating in Grange's favor was a newly-awakened
interest in football outside the East as cited earlier by
Stanley Woodward. By 1923, at least some of the credit they
deserved finally was being realized by colleges and univer-
sities in the Midwest, and while Grange was not instantly
recognized as a sensation by newspaper sports departments,
it is safe to say that by the end of the season football
followers throughout the United States were familiar with
his name.

As might have been expected, however, the New York
limp: made no extraordinary effort to spread Grange's fame.
Yale and Cornell universities, institutions much closer to the
allegiance of New York readers, both enjoyed undefeated sea-
sons in 1923 and received the larger part of the newspaper's
recognition. Coverage of Illinois games was restricted to
brief, if occasionally colorful, anonymous or wire service

accounts. The story of the 10-0 victory of Illinois over

 

2Ibid., pp. 179-180.

62

the University of Wisconsin was typical of the reports Times
readers saw. The story said, in part:

Harold "Red" Grange, the twenty-year-old flash of the
Illinois eleven, added further glory to his gridiron
fame by crashing over for a touchdown in the first
period after a thrilling 28- -yard run around left end.
Grange, as a result of his performance today,
retains the lead as the leading scorer in the West.
He has crashed over Opponents' goal lines for eleven
touchdowns in six games, a total of 66 points. .
After Illinois had piled up its lead in the first
half, Grange was replaced by Mauer, and the Illinois
backfield seemed unable to make first down consistently
in the final half.3

No account, however, was more colorful than the
one that described the 7-0 victory by Illinois over the
University of Chicago, the occasion on which the new
Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois was Opened
at the Champaign-Urbana campus. A huge crowd attended the
game, many of the fans coming down from Chicago by train
as much to watch Grange play as to follow the Chicago team
or help open the stadium. Grange did not disappoint them;
his touchdown was the only score of the game. The unsigned
story of the game reported in part that

Grange fulfilled the expectations of the alumni, many
of whom came miles to see him, by running 60 yards
through almost the entire Chicago team and by inter-
cepting a pass and tearing off a 42-yard run in the
first quarter and adding a spectacular 30-yard run

in the second quarter. The Chicago defense was unable

to solve his twisting advances and he frequently shook
off five men or more before being stopped.

 

3Associated Press, "Grange Again Star as Illinois
Wins," New York Times, Nov. 11, 1923, sec. 1, part 2, p. 3.

 

63

He also pierced the line several times for good gains
and it was his slicing drive at centre that won the game
for Illinois.4

Generally speaking, however, the fame of Red Grange

was not the concern of the New York Times in 1923; nor are

 

the reasons why hard to understand. Beside the fact that
the limp: was slower to yield to the temptation to glorify
talented athletes than were some of its competitors, Grange
still was only a SOphomore and SOphomore athletes histori-
cally have been slow to attract widespread attention. True,
Grange's statistical totals were impressive, but his univer-
sity was an unknown quantity in the East. Although Illinois
enjoyed an undefeated season and shared the Big Ten Confer-
ence championship with the University of Michigan, the two
schools did not meet in competition. And Illinois was not
scheduled to play an eastern school until 1925. If the
limp: sports department decided upon a wait-and-see approach
that decision could be forgiven. On the other hand, when
Grange was named to the prestigious Walter Camp All-America
team limp:' readers could not claim they had not been pre-
pared for the news. The facts all were there; they merely
lacked an enthusiastic presentation.

Sophomore or not, however, Red Grange was a product

of the Midwest, and the Detroit Times saw an obligation to

 

 

4"61,319 See Illinois Defeat Chicago. 7'0," ibid°9
Nov. 4, 1923, sec. 1, part 2, p. l.

64

keep his name before the public, fueling the public's curio-
sity with colorful and prominently displayed accounts of
Grange's performances. To Detroiters, and especially to
University of Michigan football followers, however, Grange
was more than a curiosity, he was an unseen enemy.

But for Grange, Michigan could have enjoyed exclu-
sive claim to the championship of the Big Ten. Of the
other members in the conference only Illinois could even
hOpe to tie for that honor. That, however, is what Illinois
did, and the largest share of the credit obviously belonged
to Grange. In four games against Big Ten opponents he
scored Illinois' only touchdowns as his team won narrow
victories.

Although Michigan and Illinois did not play each
other they did meet some common opponents, and because the
two institutions achieved their successes in different ways
they invited comparisons. Such comparisons, inevitable
because Sports reduce regional pride and loyalty to their
lowest common denominators, must nonetheless remain incon-
clusive so long as there is no direct competition between

two teams. Readers of the Detroit Times, then, could only

 

examine the accounts of Red Grange's performances and form
mind pictures of the Illinois athlete against which the
strengths and weaknesses of their local team might be

measured.

65

The picture that emerged from those accounts indi-
cated that Grange had all the prerequisites for heroism.
In the Northwestern game, for example, "The speedy Illini
halfback was practically the entire offensive during the
half, despite the mud that was supposed to have a slowing

5 In the Chicago game,

effect upon his brilliant playing."
speed--"three times he traveled so far and so fast it
looked as if none would ever stop him"--and defensive
ability--"he intercepted a forward pass by Captain Pyott

of the Maroons and dashed . . . for 55 yards, being stOpped
on the Chicago 23 yard line"6--were his most remarkable
contributions. Against Wisconsin his chief quality was
indispensibility because "Illinois did not display the

same strength it showed against Chicago . . . Its offense

."7 And against Ohio State

failed, outside of Grange
he "practically cinched an All-America berth by the pecul-
iar twists which he exhibited in his runs. The one which
went for a touchdown [thirty-four yards] started out to be an

end run, but he reversed the field and went through center."8

 

5"Purple's Fight Unable to Stem Attack of Zuppke
Clan," Detroit Times, Oct. 28, 1923, sec. 3, p. 3.

6"Grange Is Enough to Beat Stagg," ibid., Nov. 4,
1923, sec. 3, p. 1.

7"Wisconsin Beaten by Illini, 10 to 0," ibid.,
Nov. 11, 1923, sec. 3, p. l.

8"Illini's Last Period Rush Beats Ohio," ibid.,
Nov. 25, 1923, sec. 3, p. l.

 

66

To the careful reader and football enthusiast, it
was apparent that Grange ran with more speed and elusiveness
than power, that without him in the game Illinois was less
of a threat to score, that he was at least as proficient on
defense as he was when Illinois had the ball, and that he
could play as effectively on a muddy field as on a dry one.
It may not have been an accident that, although Illinois
and Michigan had not originally planned to play each other
in 1924, a game was arranged after sensational newspaper
accounts of Grange's play.

It is doubtful that the Detroit Times perceived for

 

itself any role other than that of a medium of communica-
tion in the case of Red Grange. limp: readers presumably
were interested in developments elsewhere in the Big Ten

Conference, as well as at the University of Michigan, and
Grange was of interest to them for that reason alone. He
had not yet emerged from the shadow of his own university;

that did not occur until 1924. The Detroit Times thus took

 

no pains to build for the Illinois sophomore a superman
image, only one of a talented and promising young player.
Had Grange chosen to attend a Western or a Southern school,
or even another Midwestern school not included in the Big

Ten, it is conceivable that he would have attracted more

67

attention in the New York Times than he did in the Detroit

 

paper.

By 1925, Red Grange's fame was recognized, if not
always respected, in every section of the nation. His
junior year had been even more spectacular than was his
sophomore year, and was climaxed by a sensational perform-
ance--five touchdowns and 402 yards rushing-~against the
University of Michigan.

Prior to his senior season, however, observers
quickly determined that Grange would have to be almost a
one-man team if the University of Illinois was to win foot-
ball games. The majority of the teammates who had played
supporting roles to his great performances in past seasons
were no longer in school in 1925, and most of the remaining
players were inexperienced. As a result, Opposing teams
were able to concentrate on holding Grange in check, and
Illinois was defeated in three of its first four games.

Grange continued to play well, despite this dis-
advantage, and when he led Illinois to a stunning 24-2
upset of the powerful University of Pennsylvania team his
fame became secure even in the East.

By virtue of its impact, however, the fame of Red

Grange also became a divisive force in some quarters. In

68

his day it was expected that respectable football players
would retire their talents at the conclusion of their senior
seasons and return in earnest to their studies, the better
to prepare for careers in the professions. Professional
football was not considered a suitable means of earning
one's living. It was, as Arthur Daley, a sports columnist

of the New York Times, once wrote, "a puny, rag-tail,

 

tatterdemalion object of dubious respectability . .
unwept, unhonored, and unsung--and unattended."9

Grange, however, shunned convention and signed a
contract to play for the Chicago Bears of the National
Professional Football League after his final college game.
The contract called for him to make his debut immediately
and to appear in eleven exhibition games in a seventeen-day
period, a staggering assignment. In return, he was to earn
sizeable sums of money, based on a percentage of the gate
receipts of each game. A howl of protest and denunciation
went up from college administrators, coaches, and faculty
members across the nation, and it was not lessened when.
Grange suffered a serious injury midway through the exhibi-
tion schedule and was unable to continue.

For sportswriters assigned to report Grange's

activities, 1925 opened on a strange note and closed on an

 

9Arthur Daley, "Professional Football," in Sport's
Golden Age, p. 171.

 

69

even stranger one. Their first task became one of assuring
the public that despite a weak supporting cast Grange had
lost none of his superior playing ability. After his deci-
sion to turn professional, however, many of them had to
reconcile their admiration for Grange as a man and an
athlete with their disapproval of the professional game.

And after he was injured they had to decide whether to

come to his defense and blame bad management for arranging
such a taxing schedule or whether he was mature enough to
accept the consequences of his own decision to play for pay.

The New York Times sports editors apparently decided

 

prior to the 1925 season that, as a football hero, Grange
was a genuine article. Thus the limp: felt compelled to
explain to readers that Grange might need time to assert
the individual brilliance as a senior that had characterized
his two previous years. This was particularly true after
Illinois lost its Opening game to the University of Nebraska
and Grange effectively was contained each time his team had
the ball. Commentary in the limp: acknowledged that, "Red
Grange was turned back in his 1925 bow. He crashed into a
Nebraska stone wall," but added:
But football followers have no reason to feel that
Grange has gone back. Nebraska was intimate with the
Grange attack, but the question is, will the other

teams on the Illinois schedule be able to contain the
flashy backfield star?10

 

10"The Week in Sports," New York Times, Oct. 5.
1925, p. 19.

70

Not until the Pennsylvania game--Illinois' first

appearance in the East--however, did the New York Times

 

send a reporter to verify that Grange was the superman his
reputation made him out to be. The reporter, Harry Cross,
filed two stories designed to erase the last doubts of any
reader. Prior to the game he reported that:

No football hero has ever come here heralded as Grange
has been . . . . Everyone at the station . . . and at
the hotel where the Illinois team had lunch, was anxious
to get a peek at Grange. Everyone expresses sorrow

that the snow may prevent him from doing his best.

They want to see Grange tear loose. They are for him.
The city is all excited about it. Nothing else is
talked of in the crowded hotel lobbies tonight except
Red Grange and Penn's chances of stOpping him. 1

Cross's story of the game itself turned on the theme that
Grange was the greatest football player in the land. The
Illinois star almost singlehandedly defeated Pennsylvania,
scoring three touchdowns and gaining 363 yards rushing.
Cross wrote, in part:

The East has heard of the great achievements of this
football player and has taken them with a grain of salt.
They did not believe that he could be as great as the
Middle West said he was. But he is. That is the
strange part about it. Red Grange is human. He is

not a myth. He dashes and dodges . . . with a speed

of foot and an alertness of mind which set him high up
on a pedestal among this generation of football
players.12

 

11Harry Cross, "Its Eyes on Grange, Penn Awaits
Today," ibid., Oct. 31, 1925, p. 13.

12Cross, "Grange Beats Penn for Illinois, 24-2,”
ibid., Nov. 1, 1925, sec. 10, pp. 1, 3.

71

The following day, a New York Times review of the

 

weekend's football games reported that

Red Grange's Eastern debut . . . was one of the greatest
triumphs of football. He faced one of the most powerful
defensive teams of the year, yet there was no stOpping
him and . . . there was no doubt about his place in
football's hall of fame. When he left the field . .

the crowd stood as one . . . and cheered him lustily
until his mud-coated form had passed out of Sight. It
was a wonderful tribute to a modest, brilliant hero of
the gridiron.13

The Illinois-Pennsylvania game seemed to have stirred

in the New York Times a love affair with Grange that inten-

 

sified as the college season progressed until, after his
final game, against Ohio State, a reporter was moved to
write:

The most famous, the most talked-of and written about,
most photographed and most picturesque player that the
game has ever produced has completed his intercollegiate
gridiron career.

Never again will the man for whom hundreds of
writers have searched in vain for adequate adjectives,
whose superhuman feats thousands have witnessed .
about whom millions have read, who has done more to
popularize the game of football than any other ten men,
or any other ten teams, send shivers of October and
November thrills up and down the spines of college
crowds.

The one and only Red has come--and gone.l4

Perhaps because of the intensity of its admiration

for Grange's greatness as an amateur, the New York Times

 

13"The Week in Sports," ibid., Nov. 2, 1925, P- 30-

14William D. Richardson, "Grange Turns Pro; Illinois
Wins, 14-9,” ibid., Nov. 22, 1925, sec. 10, pp. 1, 5.

was
itse

sign

72

one of a number of newspapers that could not bring
1f to applaud his decision to turn professional. In a
ed opinion, a Times reporter commented:

Red Grange finally deserted the amateur ranks. The
Illinois star did not lose any time in making the
announcement public. Grange had his plans well devel-
oped and the moment the final whistle sounded at
Columbus his statement was ready for publication.

The fact that Grange has cast his lot with profes-
sional football already has stirred up unfavorable
comment . . . but Grange doubtless has discovered
that professional football is too profitable to dis-
miss without a trial.15

A week later, the New York Times muted its skepti-

cism, but only slightly. Grange already had begun his

professional tour and had attracted unusually large num-

bers
the

but

of patrons to his games. Since success, at least in
short run, seemed assured, it needed to be acknowledged,
not without one more note of caution:

The coming of Red Grange to the professional .

game has awakened new interest in the pro section.
The college seasons have closed, but Grange continues
to perform.

Grange, as a professional, is likely to play as
many games this season as he did while wearing the
colors of Illinois. And Grange, the professional,
will reap a fortune . .

Whether his course was wise the future will decide.
But the present has told plainly that at least it was
profitable.16

 

Nov.

15James S. Carolan, "The Week in sports,” ibid.,
23, 1925, p. 28.

16Carolan, "The Week in Sports," ibid., Nov. 30,

1925, p. 14.

73

Soon afterward, Grange's team reached New York for

a game and drew a crowd of some 70,000 persons, the largest
in the history of professional football. The Times decided
that the obvious could no longer be ignored--if only because
of Grange, professional football suddenly had become re-
spectable. A reporter for the newspaper wrote of the game:

Had the Chicago Bears played the New York Giants

without Red Grange . . . it would have been just

another professional football game. But with the

redhead to be seen in action it was a spectacle that17

attracted spectators from almost every walk of life.
And a sidebar to the game story noted that

It is the great college game, so they say. It was

the great game of America yesterday, calling to those

who never saw a college campus as well as to those
who have. And it was Red Grange who made it so.

From every station in life they came . . . . To
one and all there was the same appeal. All of them
were victims in common of . . . hero worship . . . .

They were attracted to Red Grange because he is th
living symbol of the power and the glory that all 18
aspire to . . . and which only the chosen few attain.
One might think it strange that when Red Grange was
severely injured--his team was scheduled to play an average
of almost a game a day, while professional teams today play
no more than two games every seven days--the New York Times

failed to express an editorial opinion on the subject. If

it was true, as the newspaper announced, that Grange was

 

17Richards Vidmer, "70,000 See Grange in Pro Debut
Here," ibid., Dec. 7, 1925, p. 26.

18Allison Danzig, "Hero Worship Urge Brings Out
Throng," ibid., p. 26.

74

averaging $16,000 a game in salary as a professional, the
editors of the limp: may have taken the attitude that
Grange easily could afford such an inconvenience. After
all, the injury was only to one arm and only the most
serious of complications could have threatened more than
an enforced rest period until the arm healed. Writers of
the newspaper, however, professed to be smitten with
Grange's modesty and his gentlemanly qualities, and he
had made a positive impression in his visit to New York.
All accounts of the injury and the inhumane man-

agement that led to it, however, were left to the facili-
ties of the Associated Press, whose only pointed remark
on the matter was that:

C. C. Pyle, Grange's manager, is the man upon whose

head the Bears are heaping all of their abuse. He

is the man who scheduled them for five games in six

days. . . . Pyle isn't with the team. He has left

for California.19

Writers for the Detroit Times, meanwhile, evinced

 

a preoccupation with the 1925 rematch between Illinois and
the University of Michigan that superceded any concern
over Grange's inability to match his form of previous
seasons. If Grange was experiencing difficulties that
factor made the prospect of revenge increasingly sweeter.

Grange's stunning performance in the previous season's

 

19Associated Press, "Grange Not to Face Giants
Team Today," ibid., Dec. 13, 1925, sec. 11, pp. 1, 2.

75

game had been a bitter pill for Michigan enthusiasts to
swallow, and revenge did seem a realistic objective.

Weeks in advance, writers for the newspaper began
drawing the battle lines for the game. One story predicted
"a game of 'Red' and ten men against the Michigan eleven."20
Another pointed out that "Illinois hasn't shown much out-
side of Grange" and alleged that in the 1924 game only he

21 Once the

"was the difference between the two teams.”
game was over and Michigan had avenged the defeat--albeit
by the narrowest of margins, 3-0--the Detroit Times no
longer had an axe to grind and thereafter rose to his
defense against those who would doubt his greatness. The
story of the grudge—game acknowledged that:
Grange played a whale of a game
the great Red Head was wOnderful in defeat: .He never
stOpped trying. He fought his losing battle like the
champion of halfbacks he is. 2
And Herbert Reed, a Universal Service correspondent whose

specialty was covering Midwestern teams, wrote that:

Red Grange, so they say, was "stOpped" by Michigan .
It seems, however, that he was not stopped so badly

 

20E. R. Gomberg, "Michigan Battles Illinois,"
Detroit Times, Oct. 18, 1925, sec. 3, p. 5.

21Frank MacDonnell, "Who Will Be Stopped, Grange
or Friedman?" ibid., Oct. 24, 1925, p. 18.

 

22MacDonnell, "Yostmen Victors by Kick,” ibid.,
Oct. 25, 1925, sec. 3, p. l.

76
that his team did not make a great Showin against one
of the strongest elevens in the country.2§
Much has been made of the idea that Grange had to
prove to the eastern sportswriting fraternity that he was
as good as his publicity from the Midwest said he was. On
the whole, however, that notion would not seem to be

grounded in fact. Writers of the New York Times, as has

 

been indicated, proved enthusiastic about the Illinois
star even before his test at the University of Pennsylvania.
The same proved to be true of the eastern writers whose

bylines appeared in the Detroit Times. Prior to the

 

Pennsylvania game, for example, Davis J. Walsh, sports
editor of the International News Service, filed a story
that read, in part:

"This is Red Grange Day." This is the day when Red
Grange, greatest ball runner in captivity, will try
his tricks against the Pennsylvania defense. This
is the day on which Harold Grange will attempt to
buck and wing the Illinois attack into a victory
over Pennsylvania in the greatest intersectional
game of the season.

Grange was due to do more than human foot could
accomplish. It was his chance to call signal, pass
the ball, receive passes . . . and protect the
defense. If the man lives who can get away with
this, Grange is the individual.2

And Damon Runyon, in the story of the game, so flattered

Grange with his descriptions that the former football hero

 

2:SHerbert Reed, "To Date, Ends Are Big Noise, Says
Reed," ibid., Oct. 29, 1925, p. 35.

24Davis J. Walsh, "Eastern Gridders to Look Over
Grange," ibid., Oct. 31, 1925, p. 13.

77

expressed his thanks twenty-seven years later in his auto-

25

biography. Runyon's story of the game, since reprinted

in numerous sports anthologies, is regarded as a sports-
writing classic. Runyon wrote, in part:

This man Red Grange, of Illinois, is three or four men
and a horse rolled into one for football purposes.

He is Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Al Jolson, Paavo
Nurmi and Man-o'-War. Put them all together, they
spell Grange.

He slipped past some of the most alert men on the
Penn team today, seeming a silent, shadowy figure, the
mud dripping from his uniform and flying from his
cleats . . . . They saw him coming--they must have
seen him coming--but when they lunged for him, he
wasn't there.

What a football player, this man Red Grange! Say
it again.

He is melody and symphony on the football field.
He is crashing sound. He is poetry. He is brute
force. He is the doggondest football player the East
has seen in many years, and you can say that again,
too.

The sun struggled through the gray clouds overhead
and lighted up the field, seeming to center its bril-
liance on the last remaining spot of orange on Grange's
helmet as he stood upright in the backfield, a gallant
figure of a man, and the mightiest football player the
East has seen in many a year.2

A writer for the Detroit Times, however, could not

 

resist an Opportunity to register a gibe at those who would
downgrade the quality of football in the Midwest. He wrote

that:

 

25Grange, The Red Grange Stopy, p. 76.

 

26Damon Runyon, "'Red' Grange Runs Quakers Ragged,
24-2," ibid., Nov. 1, 1925, sec. 3, p. l.

78

The effete East, always willing and sometimes anxious
to belittle football . . . in the West, now realizes

that Grange is everything that has been said about him

and more.

It was Grange's biggest test . . . he had to demon-
strate that he is a superman in order to be recognized

this year as of All-American caliber.27

Unlike the New York Times, the Detroit newspaper

 

harbored no reservations about a professional career for
Red Grange, although this stance may have been motivated
less by a real interest in Grange's future than by the
interests of consistency. The city of Detroit already
had a professional football team to which the Detroit
Times had made a generous publicity commitment. To have
questioned the wisdom of Grange's decision to become a
professional would have been hypocrisy. Consequently,
even before he signed his contract, Grange had the fol-
lowing endorsement from a columnist of the Detroit Times:
What a terrible lot of excitement is being kicked up
over Red Grange. . . . One would think that he would
be guilty of treason if he elected to make his living
at the game he plays so well and at which he is so
well qualified to make his living.
On the other hand, doesn't it seem as if Red had
paid any debt he owed the college by his wonderful
work of the past three years?28

Another of the newspaper's columnists somewhat

later professed disgust at the storm of criticism being

 

27Frank MacDonnell, "Startling Upsets in Grid
Battles," ibid., Nov. 2, 1925, p. 20.

28Bert Walker, ”Sportology," ibid., Nov. 20, 1925,

p. 37.

79

directed at Grange by college faculty personnel and by news-

papermen. He wrote that

Professional coaches, professional professors and profes-
sional writers on amateur sports are . . . panning
Harold Grange for turning professional. . . . I guess
the amateur bosses are liberal only toward themselves.
They are satisfied only when they are getting theirs.

Grange has a perfect right to use his grid talents
as he sees fit. He is smart enough to know that the
best time to get the big money is at the present.

The Illinois shadow will take down close to a half
million dollars before he completes his tour with the
Bears. 29

No wonder the professional hypocrites are jealous.

The Detroit Times was one of those newspapers that

 

decided that Grange needed its assistance after the announce-

ment that he had been injured and would need a lengthy rest.

Strangely, since it was at Detroit that he first had to sit

on the sidelines because of his injury, the Times deferred

to its wire service rather than use its own reporter for an

account of the situation. The following story was filed by

Ford Frick, then an International News Service staff cor-

respondent and later the commissioner of organized baseball:

Has C. C. Pyle's greed for immediate gold . . . ruined
the career of Harold "Red” Grange, most famous player
of the age?

Detroit is asking that question and so are thousands
of others who have seen the red head fail of his objec-
tive in the last three games he has played.

Members of the Chicago Bears say Pyle has done just
that--by scheduling eight games in 10 days and mapping
out for Grange a programme which no human being could
carry through to successful conclusions. Grange is

 

Dec.

29Frank MacDonnell, "Sarno Gives Up Ghost,” ibid.,
9, 1925, p. 27.

80

definitely out of the game, his left arm in splints,
the muscles so badly bruised and lacerated and torn
that he cannot lift the arm from his side . . .

The fact is that the red head has been over-
exploited. Pyle knows nothing about football or its
demand. He went ahead and arranged the . . . strenuous
schedule, despite the protests of advisers who realized
what it might mean. He refused to acknowledge that
there was a possibility of Grange being injured or of
his inability to carry on.

Now he is paying the penalty--or rather Grange is
paying it for him.3

The attitude of the Detroit Times toward Red Grange

 

would seem to have been almost political, as though he were
a vehicle particularly well suited to a number of causes
the newspaper sought to endorse. When he became involved
in situations whose outcome was somehow relevant to the
newspaper's own goals or philosophies, his importance in-
creased proportionately. Almost it seemed as though the

Detroit Times needed Red Grange more than he needed the

 

Detroit Times.

 

As compared with the fame and glory he had experi-
enced two years earlier, Red Grange fell to virtual
obscurity in 1927. He remained in professional football,

but moved to New York and the leadership of a team known

 

30Ford Frick, "Has Harold Grange Been Over-
Exploited?" ibid., Dec. 13, 1925, sec. 3, p. 4.

81

as the Yankees in an attempt to tap the city's huge poten-
tial market for sports entertainment. New injuries,
however, plagued him and sapped his skills. Early in the
season his right knee was severely injured in a game at
Chicago and, while he courageously attempted to play in
most of the remaining games, it was apparent that he had
become a shadow of his former self. Nor was he helped by
the fact that professional football still had not achieved
the grthh its sponsors had hoped for. Grange still was a
drawing card, but his novelty long since had faded and
although he once commanded banner headlines and multiple
columns of type on the sports pages, by 1927 readers had
to search carefully for news of his exploits.

Grange's team played only one game in Detroit,
against a team from Cleveland--the Detroit franchise had
been disbanded the year before--and enjoyed some brief

exposure in the Detroit Times on that occasion. The

 

Cleveland team, however, included one Benny Friedman, a
recent All-America quarterback at the University of Michigan,
and the pre-game publicity may have been prompted as much
by Friedman's appearance as by Grange's.

One promotional story recalled Grange's sensational
performances against Michigan in 1924 and against Pennsyl-
vania in 1925 and referred to them as "football history's

31

brightest spots.” Another story said, in part:

 

31Ken Hall, "Bennie, Red Collide Here This Sunday,"
ibid., Oct. 9, 1927, sec. 2, p. 7.

82

Grange . . . is down to within two pounds of the weight
he carried during his hectic college career . . . . He
weighs 177 pounds and appears as fleet of foot as ever.
Grange says he is "in the pink" and looks it. He
does not carry that haggard look he did when here two
years ago following the strenuous campaign he made under
C. C. Pyle after the college career was ended.32
One almost can picture the strain of the Detroit
Times reporter for positive details about which to write,
however. Red Grange voluntarily had placed himself in a
kind of limbo as far as the press was concerned. No longer
was it easy to identify him with college football; new
faces had appeared in the college ranks across the nation.
The professional game, in the meantime, was struggling to
consolidate its recent gains and to push ahead slowly to
new ones, but Detroit no longer had its own professional
team and thus had no real cause for enthusiasm. It is not
surprising that when the game was over and the teams had

left the city so did most of the news about Red Grange.

The New York Times, on the other hand, displayed

 

a kind of compulsion to report news of professional foot-
ball. The city now had two major teams and each had
developed a hard core of followers as enthusiastic as
they were modest in numbers. Furthermore, the teams had
the use of the city's finest stadiums, another factor not

to be taken lightly. In addition, the player ranks of

 

32"'Red' Juggles Cement Blocks," ibid., Oct. 27,
1927, p. 36.

83

teams in the National Football League gradually were being
brightened by the additions of other widely-known former
college athletes, many of whom had followed Grange's lead.
No longer was Grange the only man of real stature in the
professional game.

Then, too, Grange's valiant effort to play despite
his obvious handicap had taken on a dramatic quality; he
had evolved into the role of a tragic hero. The severity
of his knee injury notwithstanding, he made frequent appear-
ances on the field and usually displayed some of the
brilliance that had made him a college star. Such perform-
ances offered the hope that he would eventually be able to
play regularly again and with his old skill.

Grange's family lived in Wheaton, Illinois, a sub-
urb of Chicago--as a college athlete he was known as the
”Wheaton Iceman" because he worked summers as a deliveryman
for a local ice distributor-~and his popularity in that
area still was considerable when he brought his New York
Yankee team to play an early season game against the Chicago
Bears. A report of the game in the New York Times said
"Thirty thousand people jammed Wrigley Field today . . . to
cheer Grange, football's greatest drawing card, and he

played one of the best games of his pro career.”33

 

33"Grange Badly Hurt as Yankees Lose," New York
Times, Oct. 17, 1927, p. 27.

84

Grange was injured late in the game, however, and

had to be carried from the field for medical attention. He

did not play again for almost a month. His reappearance on

the field came in New York and led to a victory over the

same Chicago team. A writer for the Times filed the fol-

lowing account of the game:

Grange failed to start the game, but he romped out on
the gridiron shortly after the second quarter Opened
amid tumultuous applause which lasted for fully three
minutes. Grange played out the period and his appear-
ance in the back field worked an immediate improvement
in the working of the ball carriers.

Although Red's ball-carrying charges were few, he
played a sterling defensive game, showing particular
skill in knocking down Chicago aerials.3

A few days later, however, the condition of Grange's

injured knee worsened, and when he attempted to play before

another New York crowd, an atmosphere of nervousness was

created, according to this report in the Times:

But a ghost of his former self, Red Grange, the galIOp-
ing ghost did no gaIIOping yesterday at the Yankee
Stadium.

It was no place for ghosts, particularly injured
ones, and most of the 10,000 persons in the stands felt
nervous for the limping Grange while he was in the game.

It was a gallant effort by the former Illinois
flash and it was roundly applauded. However, Grange
could not limp fast enough to cover passes and could
not back up the line with efficiency. He did carry
the ball and he did catch a pass and also threw others.
But each time there were a lot of people holding their
breath lest that very obviously bandaged leg give way.35

 

Nov.

34"Grange Leads Team to a 26-6 Victory,” ibid°9
9, 1927, p. 31.

35Bryan Field, "Tryon-Baker Hurt as Yanks Win,

20-6," ibid., Nov. 14, 1927, p. 17.

85

Twice more that season Grange forced himself to
play, although his team had no hope of winning the champion-
ship of the league. His efforts were courageous, however,

and were so recognized by the New York Times, one of whose

 

accounts said, in part:

Red Grange, with a crippled right leg that was practi-
cally useless, led his Yankees into battle with the
Giants . . . but although the former Illinois star
flashed brilliantly at times his fight was in

vain . .

Grange, althOugh. severely handica ped, played the
entire game and he carried more than Nis share of the
burden. He led the team, directed the aerial offensive,
and his work of running back punts was reminiscent of
his flashy work at Illinois, which won national promi-
nence for him. Red flashed here and there, but his
legs refused to stand up, and hence there was a lack
of consistency in his many attempts. He showed no
indication to save himself and when not carrying the
ball he generally took out his man and cared for any
other assignment that fell to the lot of the inter—
fering back.

The word "healthy," in the sense that it suggests
freedom from injury, is a favorite among sportswriters.
The healthy athlete is free to run, jump, or throw with
all the skill he can master; but by virtue of his freedom
from injury he seems more an object than a man. Injured
athletes, on the other hand, often seem more human than
their uninjured counterparts, both because their physical
skills suddenly appear no more remarkable than those of

the non-athlete and because they no longer tax the

 

36"Grange's Yankees Lose to Giants, 14-0,” ibid.,
Dec. 5, 1927, p. 32.

86

descriptive powers of sportswriters. Faced with an athlete
who no longer can perform at his former level,sportswriters
invariably, it seems, picture him more as an ordinary man
than as an object. Writers for the New York Times would
appear to have been no exception in the case of Red Grange.
Grange was a legitimate hero, if an injured one,
and he seemed driven by some inner compulsion to continue
playing in the hope that he might somehOWWpersona11Y’influ-
ence the outcome of each game. The limp: sportswriters
were quick to sense the dramatic implications of Grange's
struggle and, in view of the still relatively low status
of professional football at the time, to use them to pay

him high tribute.

CHAPTER V

It was characteristic of Jack Dempsey's boxing
career that when he seemed at his physical peak before a
match he could be thankful afterward that his head still
was firmly attached to his shoulders.

Sportswriters delighted in describing to readers
the remarkable physical attributes that made Dempsey a
powerful prize fighter--the strength of his body, speed
of his fists, and the aggressiveness of his character.
Dempsey's name was a household word in the 1920's, and
yet the more invincible he seemed the more erratic he
became in the ring. The measure of Dempsey's greatness
as a champion was not the way he systematically and effi-
ciently cut down his Opponents; but rather it was his
ability to court disaster and then snatch victory from
the proverbial jaws of defeat.

No such test of Dempsey's ability was greater than
his fight with Luis Angel Firpo of Argentina in September,
1923, at New York. Earlier in the year Dempsey narrowly
had defeated one Tommy Gibbons, a smooth and experienced
boxer, but the victory came by decision and the boxing
public had hoped for a knockout. Against Firpo, however,

no such difficulty seemed possible. Firpo, befitting his

87

88

nickname, "Wild Bull of the Pampas," was big and strong but
also slow, crude, and relatively inexperienced in the ring.
Firpo's only hope for victory seemed to depend on Dempsey
momentarily letting down his guard so that a one-punch
knockout might be scored. Barring that possibility, there
seemed to be no way Dempsey could lose the fight.

Dempsey did relax his guard, however, and was hit
so hard by Firpo that he fell through the rOpes enclosing
the ring and into the press row immediately outside.
Reporters shoved him back into the ring in an all but
unconscious state, and instinct alone prevented him from
losing by a knockout until the bell sounded, ending the
round. Less than two minutes later, Dempsey knocked Firpo
down and out, ending the fight and retaining his heavy-
weight championship. The dramatic impact of the event was
heightened by the fact that a crowd estimated at 90,000
fans witnessed it.

Virtually all of Dempsey's prize fights, beginning
with the one in which he won the heavyweight.championship
in 1919, were grounded in controversy. When he defeated
Jess Willard to win the championship he was accused of
having used boxing gloves stuffed with plaster of paris.
When he faced Georges Carpentier, a Frenchman and a legiti-
mate hero of the World War, most of the pre-fight publicity
was favorable to Carpentier because Dempsey had chosen to

avoid military service by spending the war years wOrking

89

in a shipyard. In 1927, when he faced Jack Sharkey, he was
accused of using dirty tactics to win-~punching the other
man below the belt and then, when Sharkey turned to the
referee to complain, landing a well-aimed knockout punch

on the exposed jaw. Later in 1927, when he attempted to
regain his heavyweight championship from Gene Tunney, it
appeared he had knocked out Tunney in the seventh round,

but Dempsey refused the referee's instructions to retire

to a neutral corner. When finally he did go to the directed
corner Tunney had sufficiently recovered to get to his feet
before the knockout count had been reached, and Tunney later
won the fight on~a decision.

The controversy seemed almost a counterpoint to the
manner in which Dempsey conducted his private life; in
matters outside the ring he appears to have been an honest
and moral man. He wisely invested his earnings, rather
than squandering money, neither drank nor smoked, enjoyed
the company of respected public figures, and reportedly
was shy around women after his first marriage ended in
divorce in 1918. Such behavior would seem to be almost
more typical of athletes today, few of whom are considered
colorful, than of athletes prominent in the 1920's, yet
Jack Dempsey was considered colorful. Why?

The reasons for Dempsey's popularity seem to have
been twofold. On one hand, his manager was an expert at

generating both sensational publicity and lucrative matches;

90

on the other, the period also produced a man considered the
most successful promoter of fights in the history of boxing.
At their hands Dempsey became more than a champion; he
became a celebrity. And although the ways of the three men
eventually parted it was not before the manager and the
promoter had made their maximum possible contributions to
Dempsey's career. When Dempsey broke his ties to the
manager, Jack "Doc" Kearns, he already was champion and a
wealthy man, with his largest purses still ahead of him;
and by the time the promoter, George "Tex" Rickard, died,
in 1929, Dempsey no longer was champion and was considered
to be in retirement, although he attempted a comeback, of
sOrts, in the 1930's.

Predictably, most of the publicity accorded Jack
Dempsey in late 1923 was based on his preparations for and
fight with Luis Angel Firpo. With the exception of the
fight with Gibbons, Dempsey had not defended his champion-
ship since July, 1921, and a number of boxing observers
believed he had become bored with it. Then,-too, he had
selected as the site for his pre-fight training a camp at
Saratoga Springs, New York, a spot famed as a summer play-
ground of the well-to-do. The distractions at Saratoga
were countless--mineral baths, swimming, boating, fishing,
horse racing, golf courses, and glamorous people. Moreover,

as the New York Times suggested prior to the championship

 

match, "Firpo . . . has had and has earned most of the

91

publicity on this fight. Dempsey, as champion, is an old

1 If, faced with such a pre-fight climate, Dempsey

story."
had chosen to do his training at.a casual and leisurely
pace, it would have been understandable, if not forgivable.

To his credit, Dempsey trained for the match as
though he were the challenger and not the champion, a policy
whose wisdom and significance the New York Times readily
applauded. Writers for the newspaper, in fact, seemed to
view themselves as Dempsey cheerleaders--their respect and
admiration for him both as an athlete and as a man showing
through their writing before and after the match.

One week before the scheduled match, a story in the

New York Times indicated that not only had Dempsey trained

 

diligently but also that he still took every opportunity to
learn more about his Opponent, whom he had never seen in
action. The story Said, in part:

In the expectation that speed will prove an important
factor in his bout with Luis Angel Firpo . . . Jack
Dempsey is devoting much of his time to develOping
nimbleness of foot without sacrificing strength. The

. . champion made a success of this phase of his
training.

Dempsey showed that he is not taking anything for
granted with respect to the approaching bout. He is
not overlooking any chance to gain additional knowl-
edge of Firpo's style of fighting, inasmuch as he has
never seen the South American in action.

His reply to statements that he should have an
easy time with Firpo 15% "Yes, they're all easy until

 

1"Air of Confidence in Dempsey's Camp," New York
Times, Sept. 11, 1923, p. 13.

92

you get into the ring with them. Then you find it's

different. The only time I accept a challenger as

easy is when he is beaten . '2
Another story reiterated that Dempsey's approach to the
match, combined with his high degree of intelligence,
offered insurance that he could only lose if Firpo landed
a lucky punch. "The two boxers are diametrically opposed
mentally," the story said, in part. ”Firpo is sluggish,
Dempsey keen. With the latter fighting is a serious busi-
ness. He goes at it seriously."3

The limp:, in fact, had a ready reply for almost

any question about Dempsey's weaknesses prior to the fight.
Did not Firpo's superior height, weight, and strength at
least deserve acknowledgment? The limp:_failed to see that
they could help the challenger. "These advantages, ordi-
narily, are important," a story said. "They are the
advantages . . . upon which hopes of victory usually depend.
But . . . when they are weighed against the overwhelming
superiority of Dempsey, they pale almost into insignifi-
cance."4 Did Dempsey still have enough pride to care

about winning? "There is some indication that Dempsey is

becoming Oppressed by the burdens of power, wealth and fame,

 

2"Dempsey Devotes His Time to Speed," ibid.,
Sept., 8, 1923, p. 9.

3"Dempsey and Firpo Face Biggest Test,” ibid.,
Sept. 9, 1923, sec. 2, pp. 1,

4"Dempsey Expected to Retain Title," ibid., p. 3.

93

though not enough oppressed to be ready to drop them," a
reporter for the limp: wrote. ”But that is always the way
with champions."5 Another story turned on the theme that
"The title does not mean as much to him as it once did,
but it means enough that he will defend it to the last
gasp, particularly against a foreign challenger."6 What
of the arguments that Dempsey had lost his old skill, and
that he never was one of the better heavyweight champions
in the first place? Two stories spoke to those questions,
the first saying, in part:

Some of the edge was shaved off his reputation when
he failed to drop Gibbons . . . but the St. Paul
heavyweight is a fine defensive fighter who . . .
went into the ring with the fixed idea only of
staying the limit. Then, too, Dempsey's long in-
activity before the Gibbons bout doubtless had not
a little to do with his lack of timing judgment in
delivering his punches.

In the second, a writer commented that:

Dempsey, for several reasons, has never been what
might be termed a popular champion, certainly not
idolized as old John L. Sullivan, Jim Corbett and
James J. Jeffries were in their heyday. . . . For
this Dempsey has not been wholly to blame, for
never was the crop of contenders as sparse as it
has been during his regime.

 

S"Air of Confidence in Dempsey's Camp," p. 13.

6"Will Pay $1,300,000 to See Bout Tonight," ibid.,
Sept. 14, 1923, pp. 1, l4.

7"Dempsey and Firpo Face Biggest Test," pp. 1, 3.

8"Comment on Current Events in Sports," ibid.,
Sept. 10, 1923, p. 22.

94

And what of Dempsey's condition going into the fight? Had
he really trained with discipline at Saratoga Springs, or
had he merely gone through the motions? A writer for the
newspaper said, almost lyrically, that:

At no stage of his training has Dempsey looked so well.
He was as light on his feet as a dancer. He was sure
footed and steady on legs which are remarkably thin
for a man of his size, but surprisingly strong. He
never made a misstep . . . . Throughout the workout
Dempsey breathed easily and he perspired freely . . . .

Dempsey is in shape for the fight of his life. He
has the body of a perfectly trained athlete. Also it
is the strong, powerful body of a perfectly trained
fighting man . . . the flanks are slim and the waist
is small. But above the waist the champion's torso
spreads fanlike and becomes immense. The back and
shoulders reflect the tremendous power which Dempsey
enjoys. Muscles ripple smoothly under the bronzed
skin with each movement of the upper body.

His arm movements disclose a contraction of the
biceps where powerful muscles bulge. In the forearm
musclar strands stand out like whipcords when he
closes and opens his fists. And not an ounce of

superfluous flesh is visible on any part of his
body.

Writers for the New York Times left no doubt that

 

their sympathies lay with Jack Dempsey, but any newspaper
must be prepared to accord to a new champion the honors

due him if he should somehow succeed in overthrowing the
old champion. Thus, its sports department saw the need

to refrain from taking an irreversible position with regard
to the fight, possibly even because a surprise victory by

Firpo might have international implications a newspaper of

 

9"Last Hard Workout Is Held By Dempsey," ibid-»
Sept. 12, 1923, p. 16.

95

the stature of the Times could ill afford to run afoul of.
To cover such a contingency, a reporter wrote the following
commentary prior to the fight:

It is a curious fact that, in spite of the odds being
all in Dempsey's favor, in spite of the fact that
Firpo is criticized as being both unskilled and un-
schooled in the arts of pugilism . . . the ticket sale
up to date augurs one of the greatest throngs in the
history of fighting. . . . The interest is doubtless
based on the psychology peculiar to the sport . . . .
The South American may--not many think he will--but he
may--slip over a knockout punch. The hundred thousand
are taking no chances of not being there in the event
that such a thing happens. To be "in at the death of
a champion" and to acclaim his successor is something.10

Dempsey, of course, vindicated most of-the optimism

of the New York Times and other newspapers, but in doing,so

 

sorely tested it and raised a serious question about his
ability to withstand other challenges in the future--it
was, in fact, his last successful defense of the champion-
ship. The New York Times, with its own credibility to
think of, acknowledged these matters in post-fight stories
and offered the following reassessment of Dempsey:

As a cold matter of fact he was a beaten man, had it
been a man with a fighting brain he was facing . .
Dempsey did not have sense enough to cover his chin.
Four years as champion, with all the attendant luxury
and easy living, undoubtedly have affected the champion,
but the extent of this luxurious life has not progressed
to a point where it seriously has impared Dempsey's

 

10"Comment on Current Events in Sports," p. 22.

96

fighting qualities. He had to be at his best, physically

and mentally, to withstand the terrific punches of

Firpo 11
And the following day, a reporter wrote that:

a badly discolored left eye . . . was the only mark the

champion had . . . however, he had a distinct memory of

one of his hardest ring bouts. Dempsey freely admitted

what everybody else knew--that he had emerged triumphant

from a trying situation.12

Generally speaking, however, New York was in

Dempsey's corner as well as in his debt. If the city and
its news media had provided the facilities for such an
event and had generated the interest of the tens of thou-
sands of spectators who witnessed it, Dempsey in return had
provided more excitement than most boxing followers there
had seen in many years. He had done all a man could be
asked to do to win-~Firpo was knocked to the floor seven
times in the first round before landing the punch that sent
Dempsey through the ropes-~and had emerged still a worthy
champion, with his courage and honor intact. Moreover, he
had come completely across the continent to do it--his
home was in Los Angeles. Heavyweight championship matches,
historically considered the most prestigious in the sport,

generally had been denied New Yorkers in recent history.

The most recent ones had been held in such distant or

 

11"Firpo Had Title Within His Grasp," ibid-,
Sept. 15, 1923, p. l.

12"Dempsey Praises Firpo as Fighter," ibid.,
Sept. 16, 1923, sec. 1, part 2, pp. 1, 3.

97

otherwise inaccessible points as Shelby, Montana; Jersey
City, New Jersey; Benton Harbor, Michigan; Toledo, Ohio;
and Havana, Cuba. Dempsey had fought a championship match
in New York in 1920, but it had been held indoors at the
old Madison Square Garden--the first of three arenas that
have borne that name--whose seating capacity was limited.

The New York Times was cognizant of the fact that

 

its city now was the world capital of boxing, thanks in no
small measure to the Dempsey match. As a result, the
heavyweight champion enjoyed the almost unqualified sup-
port and admiration of the newspaper. Had the limp: known
then that it would be nearly three years until Dempsey next
chose to defend his title, and that he no longer would be
welcome to do so in New York, however, its admiration and
support might have been less than enthusiastic.

A writer of the New York Times had found that the

 

Dempsey training camp was "an old story" and that "there
is not much news unless he loses,"13 but readers of the

Detroit Times were treated to what seemed to be a contest

 

to find stories where there really were none. In their
determination to keep the image of Dempsey before the
public, Damon Runyon and other reporters of the Hearst
organization went to inordinate and sometimes ridiculous

lengths seeking material or angles about which to write.

 

13"Air of Confidence in Dempsey's Camp," p. 13.

98

Each man purported to be a closer intimate of Dempsey than
the others, and news of the technical aspects of Dempsey's
preparations for the fight with Firpo went begging while
reporters struggled to decide whether Dempsey was super-
human or a mere mortal.

It is not difficult to understand that many New
York writers believed themselves to be "on the inside"
with Dempsey. The champion moved around the city with an
easy familiarity, having once lived there for six months
when he still was an obscure and struggling fighter, and
having fought two championship matches in the area, one
in 1920 and one at nearby Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1921.
Then, too, according to Mel Heimer, a syndicated columnist
and biographer of the former champion, Dempsey enjoyed
traveling in New York cafe society and occasionally could
be seen at one or more of the city's famous night spots.14

Because Luis Angel Firpo lacked refinement and
sophistication, and perhaps because he was a native of
South America rather than of Western Europe where, con-
ceivably, he might have commanded a full measure of respect
from Hearst writers, he suffered in comparison with Dempsey.
The champion no sooner arrived in New York on the final leg

of his cross-country trip from Los Angeles to the training

 

14Mel Heimer, The Long Count (New York: Atheneum,
1969), pp. 75-76.

 

99

camp in Saratoga Springs than a reporter wrote that his
preparations for the fight.with Firpo would be merely
"routine.” The story also said, in part:

The champion never looked better. He is carrying
practically no excess weight, bubbles over with boyish
spirit and his clear brown eyes twinkled merrily as he
greeted intimate friends with playful hugs and gentle
taps of his big hands.
”Say, I could fight in a week," said Dempsey. "I
feel great."1
Another writer found cause to depreciate the chal-
lenge of Firpo, although the scheduled match still was
more than a month away. His story said, in part:

Some of our nice, home-loving heavyweights Should con-
nect with the idea that discretion is the better part
of valor--and not toss challenges promiscuous-like in
the general direction of "Jacko the Demps."

They might get wounded.
Dempsey is still good enough to take the measure of
anyone in the game--and knock out about nine-tenths
of the group .
Give him Wills, Willard, Firpo or another of these
big, Slow-moving persons, and he'd dart in and out,
crashing with rights, crashing with lefts, bringing
down his man in the end.

The man who will dethrone Dempsey is not a man of
the size and the bulk and the slowness of Firpo

Rather it must be a fast, clever man with a dangerous
punch . .1

 

15Sid Mercer, "Dempsey Trains at Saratoga Springs,"
Detroit Times, Aug. 5, 1923, sec. 3, p. 1.

16Frank G. Menke, "Champion Still Looks Part of
Great Fighter," ibid., Aug. 12, 1923, sec. 3, p. 3.

 

100

Still another reporter offered as his explanation
of Dempsey's greatness that

It is the truth that Dempsey takes care of himself. He
is a real athlete, in love with his game and a respector
of his body. Booze and the high life, which has [sic]
tumbled many a champion before his day, has no part in
the Champion's life. His preparations for Firpo at
Saratoga have been hard and most conscientious.

This writer will not be surprised to see Firpo on
the floor in the first round and knocked out before six
rounds. As for Firpo taking the championship from
"Man Killer Jack," he might just as well hope to wear
a halo in Perdition. It can't be done.

When Dempsey's training camp was opened one day
only to the well-to-do a reporter for Hearst's Universal
Service wrote that

It was society day at the camp and more social lights
and multi-millionaires were in the crowd than ever
before saw a fist champion do his training tricks.

A pleasant time was had by all.

Dempsey wasn't quite so vicious with his sparring
partners as he had been the day before, but he made
all the boys step around in loveliest fashion to
escape being conveyed to undertaking parlors. He was
jolted by a George Godfrey uppercut, lost his temper
for a second and crossed over with a right which made
George think that the tower of the Woolworth building
had fallen against his chin.18

Of all the Hearst writers on the scene, however,
none tried harder to Show that he had the ear of Dempsey

than did Damon Runyon. His pre-fight columns implied

 

17Thomas J. Cummiskey, "Luis Firpo No Match for
Mauling, Tearing Dempsey, Belief of Critic," ibid.,
Sept. 9, 1923, sec. 3, p. 9.

18Universal Service Wire, "Society Sees Champ Do
His Tricks," ibid., Aug. 27, 1923, p. 12.

101

private conversations with the champion, although this is
not to say that he may not actually have had such conversa-
tions. Still, Runyon broached subjects that other sports-
writers at the camp did not presume to discuss. One column
described the manner in which Dempsey prepared himself to
begin training, saying, in part:»

Before beginning his training for a fight, Jack Dempsey
always puts in from one to two weeks at what he calls
"playing around."

It really amounts to nothing more than a complete
mental rest.

In that period Dempsey endeavors to dismiss from
his mind all thoughts of his work. He gives himself
a mental vacation. Generally he takes a hunting or
fishing trip. During the last week he has found
diversion at the races.

Dempsey could not have picked a better place for
a mental vacation . . . than Saratoga Springs during
the races.19

Another column attempted to reassure those who feared that
Dempsey would not take the challenge of Firpo seriously
enough. Runyon wrote the following:

Just how seriously does Jack Dempsey take Luis Angel
Firpo?

Does the champion believe the tales that are told
him of Firpo's crudeness, of his singular inefficiency,
or does he take greater stock in the statements of
those who tell him that Firpo is a big, strong, rough,
hard-hitting fellow?

The writer is inclined to think Dempsey believes
the latter.

0 O O O O O O O

Firpo is . . . crude and cumbersome . . . . But
he is . . . dangerous when it comes to hitting, and
one good smash often offsets great speed and knowl-
edge of boxing.

 

19Damon Runyon, "Says Damon Runyon," ibid., Aug. 10,
1923, p. 14.

102

The writer thinks Dempsey realizes this.

The writer thinks the champion has an estimate of
the "Wild Bull of the Pampas" that will at least kee
him from making the mistake of underestimating him.2

A third column speculated that if Dempsey somehow should
lose to Firpo he still would continue to seek his living
as a prize fighter. Runyon wrote:

What would Dempsey do if Firpo beat him?
Would he retire?
The writer thinks not.
The writer has often heard the champion remark that

he is going to quit the game when someone "hits him on

the chin."

Dempsey thinks he means this--now. Perhaps he would
drop out of sight for a few months. Then you would see
him active again.

Dempsey is only 28 years old. He has done nothing
to undermine his constitution, to make him old beyond
his time, as many fighters do. He could go on for some
years, after losing his title, making a great deal of
money.

Runyon's fascination for Jack Dempsey continued well

after the fight with Firpo. He knicknamed the champion
"The King of Fistiana" and took pleasure in describing the
way in which "crowds follow him in the streets, wait out-
side his hotel for a glimpse of him." "Dempsey is king,"
Runyon wrote, "not because he is heavyweight champion, as
because of his tremendous color and personality." The
column continued:

Dempsey has something of Sullivan, something of Corbett

and all of William Harrison Dempsey in him .

First of all he loves the crowd. He loves to be in
it and of it whether he is the cause of the crowd or

 

20Ibid., Aug. 11, 1923, p. 12.

21Ibid., Aug. 23, 1923, p. 12.

103

not. He loves to rub elbows with humanity in general.
He must have people around him. He is in his element
in a mob.

Willard and Jeffries made no secret of disliking
the crowd. The crowd quickly sensed the dislike and
let Willard and Jeffries alone. The crowd knows that
Dempsey likes it therefore the crowd likes Dempsey,
and he is king. 2

Still later, Runyon found another angle about which
to write.1 Dempsey had come to New York for the Christmas
holidays and passed some of his time doing "light training."
The sportswriter saw significance in this routine of the
champion and wrote:

”Light.training" to a professional boxer consists of
long walks, calesthenics and dieting.

Why is the world's champion in light training?

He has no match for the near future . . . . He is
young, in good health. He has no bodily ailments to
overcome. Why should he be in "light training?”

It is because Dempsey desires to keep himself in
perfect condition, to prevent the accumulation of fat
that comes with idleness, to keep his stomach in good
order, his mind attuned to the business of his life.

That is why Dempsey is world's champion.

Some of Runyon's bias is understandable. Only the
year before he had accompanied Dempsey and a party of
friends on a pleasure trip through Europe.24

It Should perhaps be mentioned that at least one

of the Hearst reporters who had so quickly dismissed the

challenge of Luis Angel Firpo prior to the championship

 

22Ibid., Dec. 17, 1923, p. 19.

23Ibid., Dec. 20, 1923, p. 26.

24Heimer, The Long Count, p. 82.

 

104

match later felt compelled to acknowledge Firpo's heroic
struggle. Shortly after the match a story appeared in the

Detroit Times crediting Firpo with not having known ”the

 

meaning of fear.” Even in this, however, the writer made
no pretense at being objective. His story continued:
If Firpo were about five years younger . . . he would

have a most royal chance at becoming the wonder of
wonders of the ring.

Jack Dempsey is that wonder man now, the greatest,
I believe, the ring has ever known.

Dempsey, in that astounding first round, threw
science to the winds. He fought a slugging battle, as

Firpo fights. Next time he is pretty apt to fight as
he did in the second round, with all his wonderful

ring craft, scientifically applied.25

Jack Dempsey did not defend his championship again
until September, 1926, three years--and eight days-~after
the Firpo match. His long absence from the ring was excused
on several grounds, and damned on several others; but the
recurring theme was that he had exhausted the supply of
logical challengers--except one.

Harry Wills also was a heavyweight boxer at the
time, and a good one. Many boxing observers thought that

Wills deserved the opportunity to meet Dempsey for the

 

25Thomas J. Cummiskey, "Dempsey-Firpo Return Bout
Planned," ibid., Sept. 17, 1923, p. 19.

105

championship and, in fact, the two men eventually did Sign
an agreement in 1925 calling for such a match. The match
was not held, however, and in boxing circles there was
speculation that Dempsey secretly was afraid of Wills and
never intended to fight him in the first place. The
Dempsey followers argued that the match had fallen through
because the promoter--not Tex Rickard in this case--failed
to raise the prize money he had guaranteed the champion.
More to the point, however, seemed to be the climate of
public opinion. It is questionable whether the fight
would have been sanctioned in many, if not most, sections
of the nation, because Harry Wills was a negro.

As the months of 1925 passed and it was apparent
that Dempsey would not fight again soon, criticism began
to mount on several fronts. Disgusted followers of boxing
wrote letters critical of Dempsey to their local news-
papers. A few newspapers printed editorials recommending,
even demanding, that Dempsey be stripped of his title for
failure to defend it within a reasonable period of time.
The New York State Athletic Commission, a governing body
of professional boxing, voted to refuse Dempsey permission
to fight anyone else in that state until after he had
defended his championship against Wills. And the old
criticism of Dempsey's evasion of military service during
the World War was renewed for the first time since he

fought Georges Carpentier in 1921.

106

Judging from their stories and columns of 1925,
sportswriters seemed generally to believe not so much that
Dempsey actually ought to fight Wills as that Wills ought
to be offered the opportunity to meet Dempsey--the point
being that their motivation probably was prompted less by
a desire to protect the interests of Wills than it was by
a desire to prod or to shame Dempsey into action. Memories
of the only negro ever to hold the heavyweight champions
ship--the obnoxious and widely hated Jack Johnson--still
were fresh in the minds of many followers of boxing and
it is questionable that many sportswriters were anxious
to give Harry Wills a stage from which to perform as
Johnson had. Still, it is safe to say that if sports-
writers generally regarded Jack Dempsey as a hero in 1923,
few could be found in 1925 who regarded him as much better
than a villain.

Along with that of sportswriters on other news-
papers, the patience of boxing writers for the New York
limp: ebbed and was replaced with dismay and suspicion at
the conduct of Dempsey. After a meeting of the New York
State Athletic Commission, at which persons acting without
Dempsey's consent made an agreement that the champion would
meet Wills in that state at some undetermined date, James P.
Dawson of the limp: wrote that

Like a derelict wallowing in the storm-tossed sea,
the weakened seams holding together the Jack Dempsey

107

heavyweight title ship burst yesterday and the craft
can scarcely be salvaged.26

The real dismay of the sports department of the
newspaper, however, was perhaps best reflected in an edito-
rial several days after Dawson's story. Dempsey had been
feuding with his manager, Kearns, and was trying to sever
his ties to the man. The New York State Athletic Commis-
sion retaliated by issuing Kearns a new license recognizing
him as Dempsey's manager. The champion declined to come
to New York to attend hearings of the commision and in-
sisted on communicating by means of telegrams and air mail
letters, much to the disgust of the news reporters. The
editorial in the limp: said, in part:

It is difficult to find an excuse for Jack Dempsey's
actions. He is the ruling monarch of the ring,
pugilism's most imposing physical figure. He has a
position to uphold, championship to defend. Yet
Dempsey cuts a sorry spectacle with his backing and
filling, his announcements one day in one section of
the country that he will fight . . . anybody any
place, and his proclamations another day in another
section of the country that he won't fight anybody
any place.

This is not the Dempsey of old, the fearless,
powerful ring fighter who rose from obscurity to fame
and affluence, the young giant who hurdled every
obstacle in his path to a championship and mowed down
those who questioned his right to the throne when he
reached the heights, in a manner which gained him wide
pOpularity and friends to be counted by the thousands.
Now Dempsey is losing his great pOpularity--if, indeed,
he has not already lost it . .

There is one of two courses of action Open to
Dempsey. He wants to fight and will or he doesn't

 

26James P. Dawson, "Forfeits Posted by Kearns and
Rickard for Dempsey Bout," New York Times, Aug. 19, 1925,
p. 16.

 

108

want to fight and won't. His definite acceptance of
either course will be welcomed by a fight public, which
has wearied of an endless wordy battle across the
Continent. The public is entitled to know if Dempsey
intends to fight again . .27

Late in September Dempsey finally yielded to pres-

sure and affixed his signature to a contract to meet Harry

Wills. On the surface, the contract appeared to be above

board, but a writer for the New York Times decided that

 

Dempsey's motives were suspect and hinted as much in a

story the following day:

for

The closing of the match ended a long and patient
campaign by the negro challenger for a battle to
which he was entitled . . . . At the same time, the
signing apparently has precipitated a situation
which may result in a serious menace to boxing, as
court suits are in the offing, and they can have no
beneficial effects.

An ominous quiet greeted the news of the signing
in local circles. Promoter Tex Rickard . . . empha-
sized that he has been the victim of gross ingratitude
on the part of Dempsey, in view of the fact that it
was through the instrumentality of Rickard the
champion became what he is today.

Jack Kearns, who . . . still is legally the
manager of the champion whether Dempsey likes it or
not, reflected the sentiments of Rickard.

The real suspicion of the Times, however, was saved
a second sports editorial that said, in part:

It is apparently but a gesture on the part of the
champion, a sop to the pursuing Wills and at the same
time to that part of the boxing world which has been
insistently clamoring for a Dempsey-Wills match.
Dempsey has some underlying motive for affixing
his signature to the contract . . . . The champion

 

27"The Week in Sports," ibid., Aug. 24, 1925, p. ll.

28nDempsey-Wills Sign to Fight in Indiana," ibid.,

Sept. 30, 1925, pp. 1, 18.

109

has evaded a Wills match too long and too successfully
not to have some ulterior motive for at last apparently
capitulating to public demand. . . . probably it is
. . . that Dempsey in his heart feels that a bout
between himself and Wills never will be tolerated, that
States throughout the Union will prohibit the battle
until in the end a nation- wide ban is placed on the
bout. Dempsey then will be in a position to . .
point to the fact that he signed to box Wills, but the
recognized authorities forbade the match.
The news was received here with mistrust, to say the
least. On the Pacific Coast, Dempsey's home land, the
announcement caused not a ripple of excitement. It is
a fair indication of the public's attitude toward the
Slgnlng.

Boxing followers cannot be blamed for questioning
the sincerity of purpose which dictated this course
to Dempsey.

Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be,
the furor over the Dempsey-Wills match subsided rather
quickly once it was discovered that the promoter, one
Floyd Fitzsimmons, lacked the money to back up his guar-
anteed prize money to the champion. Prospects for the
match seemed irreparably damaged, and soon afterward
Dempsey accepted an invitation to go to Mexico for a
series of personal appearances and boxing exhibitions.

It was on the occasion of his visit to Mexico City that

a reporter for the New York Times recorded the newspaper's

 

last real attack against the champion. In an unattributed,
but copyrighted, story the reporter wrote that:
Jack Dempsey objects to giving the public a free view

of the world's champion. He has moved from the Hotel
Regis to a small village near Mexico City because he

 

29"The Week in Sports," ibid., Oct. 5, 1923, p. 19.

110

believes that his appearance before crowds will lessen
the drawing power of his boxing exhibition. The crowds,
as usual, were composed largely of small native boys
who were anxious to see the widely advertised fighter.

The American Legion had flatly turned down a pro-
posal to give a smoker to Dempsey, as it considers him
unworthy of such attention from the fighters in the
World War. However, the American Club, after bitter
opposition of many members, has decided to hold a
smoker . . . . Many Mexican sympathizers of the allies
are unable to forget Dempsey's attitude . . . and
several times the word "coward" in Spanish has been
hurled at the champion when passing.0

The ugly little story seems to have been less in
keeping with the character of the Times than with that of

the rival New York Herald-Tribune, whose boxing writer and

 

sports columnists Openly campaigned for Dempsey's banish-
ment in disgrace from the heavyweight championship. Jack
Lawrence, boxing specialist of the Herald-Tribune, referred
to Dempsey's "smug silence" in the matter of the Wills
match and wrote that, "If Dempsey doesn't come to reason-
able terms in the immediate future the BOxing Commission
would be justified in declaring his title vacated."31
When the governing body decided only to refuse Dempsey
permission to fight anyone else in New York before he met

Wills, a news story under Lawrence's name said, in part:

The New York State Athletic Commission yesterday
continued to play a phlegmatic and somewhat

 

30"Fearing Free Views of Him May Hurt Gate, Dempsey
Leaves Mexico City for a Village," ibid., Oct. 29, 1925,
p. 20.

31Jack Lawrence, "Boxing Board Without Word from
Dempsey," New York Herald-Tribune, Aug. 2, 1925, sec. 10,
2

p.

 

the

111

pusillanimous role in connection with the Jack Dempsey-

Harry Wills controversy . . . it was plain after some
thousands of words had been spilled promiscuously that
the situation remains quite unchanged.3

W. O. McGeehan, an outspoken sports columnist for

newspaper, was one of the writers who revived the

accusation at this time that Dempsey had been a slacker

during the World War. On one occasion McGeehan wrote that

As I recall it, I deplored the fact that Mr. Dempsey,
the heavyweight champion fighter of the world, could
not get interested in the World War, which was open

to all comers. I was reproached for hounding a lovable
character, an ornament to society and a credit to the
manly art of mauling. I have committed many crimes in
the name of sport writing, but I am innocent of any

part in the making of a popular idol out of Mr. Jack
Dempsey.33

And, on another occasion McGeehan, who professed to admire

the

upcoming young heavyweight, Gene Tunney, not yet

regarded as being ready to fight Dempsey, reiterated his

indignation that Dempsey had not served his country during

the

war. His column said, in part:

While I felt it would be poetic justice and all that
sort of thing if Gene Tunney, of the Marines, could
beat Jack Dempsey, of the shipyards, I could not pic-
ture it happening. The prize ring is no place for
poetic justice.3

 

32Lawrence, "Boxing Commission Again Fails to Take

Any Action on Jack Dempsey-Harry Wills Problem," ibid.,

Aug.

5, 1926, p. 16.

33W. O. McGeehan, "Down the Line," ibid., p. 16.

34Ibid., Aug. 15, 1925, p. 11.

112

One must wonder, however, whether at least some of
the concern of sportswriters for the New York newspapers
was not motivated by threats to that city's prestige as
the boxing capital of the world. As 1925 gave way to 1926,
Jack Dempsey still was under no binding contract to fight
a championship match and seemed to feel no inclination to
so commit himself. Dempsey was at home in California most
of the time and could not even be reasoned with by New York
officials, except at considerable public expense. Then,
given this situation, the New York State Athletic Commission
refused to declare Dempsey's title vacant in that state,
despite the fact that its members had both the power and,
presumably, the justification for doing so.

If Dempsey could not be used as a drawing card,
with or without his championship intact, even the promotional
genius of Tex Rickard might not have been sufficient to sus-
tain interest in a match between the two logical contenders
for the title. A less than capacity crowd of spectators to
such a match, especially if the match were held in New York,
could do irreparable harm to the city's prestige.. Moreover,
one of the logical contenders was Gene Tunney, a native of
New York City. And if Tunney somehow inherited the cham-
pionship without a fight critics of boxing undoubtedly
would argue for years that his status was tainted since he

had not actually defeated Dempsey to win it.

113

Then, too, New York no longer was the only logical
city in which championship matches could be held. Yankee
Stadium, the Polo Grounds, and the magnificent new Madison
Square Garden, which had opened in 1925, all were excellent
facilities for important prize fights; but Chicago, Phila-
delphia, and Los Angeles all had outdoor arenas seating
more than 100,000 spectators, numbers greater than anything
New York had to offer. The possibility at least was remote
that New York might lose face if the Dempsey matter was not
soon resolved.

That sportswriters of the New York newspapers were
more than just casually concerned about the Dempsey matter
would seem to be underscored by an almost relaxed attitude
on the part of writers in other sections of the nation,
particularly in Detroit. Detroit, too, was a center of
interest in boxing, perhaps because its large blue collar
population particularly enjoyed spectator sports during
leisure time. Those persons who read sports news in the

Detroit Times, however, were exposed to no calls for action

 

by Dempsey. Other than those stories that were written by
reporters for the Hearst syndicates and wire services, the

Detroit Times sports department took no irreversible posi—

 

tion with regard to Jack Dempsey.
Most of-the negative comment about Dempsey, at that,

came only from one writer, Sam Hall, whose stories took the

114

position that Dempsey was not afraid of fighting any other
boxer, Wills included, but that he was afraid to do so in

New York. Hall wrote that

[Dempsey] has been, and still is, in bad here and fears
his title would be taken away from him on the slightest
excuse, perhaps a foul. Another [fear] is that the
boxing commission would pick the referee and the judges
without consulting him. Still another is that he would
have to fight to a decision.

Dempsey personally is not afraid of Wills. His
courage is unquestioned. But he is afraid of losing
his title and that makes him nervous . . . . He wants
to be on the safe Side as much as possible.

Other champions have done that. There has been
many a championship fight with the referee picked by
the title-holder and it has long been no secret that
champions prefer no-decision bouts.3S

Hall later predicted that, "Dempsey and Wills are not going
to fight anyway. They can't fight in this country because
they will not be permitted."36
Either out of stubbornness or out of naivete, the
boxing writer of the Detroit Times went so far as to assume
that all parties who signed the contract for a Dempsey-Wills
championship match were sincere and that the contract itself
was a genuine article. His quarrel was with Dempsey's
courage to stand up and fight against a negro rather than

with his longstanding refusal to fight at all. He wrote

that, "there isn't a law in the land that will stand up if

 

35Sam Hall, "Dempsey Afraid to Fight in New York,"

Detroit Times, Aug. 14, 1925, p. 22.

36Hall, "'Show Down' Coming AS Wills Lands,”
ibid., Sept. 5, 1925, p. 13.

 

115

it bars a black from fighting a white man where boxing is
allowed." His story continued:
If Dempsey can't whip any man in the world, white,
black or yellow, he really doesn't deserve to be
called the champion of the world, no matter what
effect a mixed match may have in the end.37
He later wrote that he had knowledge of a better than
$1 million guarantee made to Dempsey for the fight by a
syndicate of businessmen from South Bend, Indiana, and
added:
You can mark Dempsey down as being afraid of Wills if
he doesn't go through with the contract. He gets his
million just as soon as he goes through with the fight.
Dempsey . . . realizes that he is in the middle.
The South Bend syndicate has not forced his hand and
has given him plenty of time.
Jack Dempsey has signed to fight Harry Wills.
Until he repudiates his contract . . . he must be con-
sidered as sincere and a champion who isn't afraid to
meet his most worthy challenger.38
The reaction of the boxing writer for the Detroit
Times would seem to have been understandable, even predict-
able. Residents of his city may have had considerable
interest in the heavyweight championship matter-~although
on a lesser level than New York, Detroit was active as a

site for prize fights--yet there was no local angle from

which he could view the develOpments. Jack Dempsey had

 

37Frank MacDonnell, "Fakaroos in Order,” ibid.,
Oct. 2, 1925, p. 30.

38MacDonnell, "Dempsey Guaranteed Cool Million,"
ibid., Nov. 12, 1925, p. 29.

116

not fought nearer Detroit than Toledo, Ohio, in 1919, nor
was he likely to in the future. Followers of boxing, how-
ever, could be depended upon to form opinions of the
Champion's conduct and to turn to the sports pages of their
newspapers for reinforcement of their opinions in the
stories and columns. It would have been unoriginal, if

not unprofessional, to have echoed the views of syndicated
writers from New York whose very vantage point lent cred-
ence to whatever they wrote. His only alternative would
appear to have been to seize upon the most significant of
the issues that no one else had discussed, in this case the
racial issue.

At the same time, the writer may not have dared to
come down too hard on Dempsey after the contract had been
signed for the match with Wills, just in case it had been
signed in sincerity. If only because of his vantage point
in Detroit he probably lacked the scope of understanding in
the matter that was enjoyed by experienced writers in New
York, and thus believed that since Dempsey still was the
champion he at least deserved the benefit of the doubt until

his actions proved otherwise.

Many students of the history of boxing believe that

Jack Dempsey did not really become a hero to the public

117

until after he lost his championship to Gene Tunney in 1926.
Then, "The nation took the beaten villain to its heart,
loved him again, and dubbed him hero," Paul Gallico wrote.
"And hero he remained up to and through the famous Battle
of the Long Count in Chicago ... ."39

To help prepare himself for a return match with
Tunney in 1927, Dempsey asked for the opportunity to fight
some other good heavyweight and was matched with Jack
Sharkey at Yankee Stadium in New York. The disputed punch
below the belt and subsequent knockout gave Dempsey a
victory, and it was a tribute to his pOpularity that the
match attracted a sellout crowd although no championship
was at stake.

The match with Sharkey was held in July, 1927, with
the Tunney fight scheduled for September 22, at Soldier
Field, Chicago. The times, however, had become more com-
plex than ever before and posed new obstacles for Dempsey.
He had been champion for seven years, but now he once again
was the challenger, an adjustment few champions look for-
ward to. He had not fought well against Tunney in 1926 and
numerous reports had circulated that he had not been at his
best physically; there were dark suggestions that his food

and beverages had been tampered with. There also were

accusations, some hinted at by Dempsey himself, that the

 

39Gallico, The Golden People, pp. 86-87.

 

118

conduct of Tunney before and during the fight smacked of
illegality--although the charges by Dempsey were not made
until shortly before the return match. In addition, criti-
cism of Dempsey's own tactics in the Sharkey match persisted
almost until the day of the second fight with Tunney. More-
over, Dempsey was now thirty-two-years-old and unquestion-
ably was no longer as swift as he once had been. He had
remarried in 1925, but the second Mrs. Dempsey, the former
Estelle Taylor, a motion picture actress, was not a strong
woman physically and reports also circulated that the
marriage was on unsteady ground. Finally, a number of
persons in the Chicago area sought to have the return match
cancelled, or at least rescheduled at a different arena, on
grounds that Dempsey had reneged on previous contracts to
fight under their sponsorship and that his attitude toward
military service was not consistent with the spirit Soldier
Field sought to commemorate.

Under the circumstances, the former champion could
have been forgiven if his attitude toward sportswriters had
been short or guarded. Instead, reporters found him genial
and cooperative, with the result that he may have enjoyed
the most favorable publicity of his career.

There was every evidence that reporters for the

New York Times had forgiven Dempsey for his inactivity of

 

two years. Their stories made it apparent that they enjoyed

visiting his training camp and that they fretted when the

119

former champion seemed lax or ineffective in his routine.
James P. Dawson, the boxing specialist of the limp:,
evinced concern on several occasions, particularly one on
which several thousand persons had been admitted to the
camp to watch Dempsey box against his sparring partners.
Dawson thought the crowd was too large and had destroyed
Dempsey's concentration. The reporter wrote that

if he got any benefit out of the drill he is a wonder

. . . for Dempsey worked under conditions such as

never before in the history of boxing have been experi-

enced by any fighter in training for an important
battle.40

Richards Vidmer, another sportswriter of the Times,
filed a story expressing distress over Dempsey's habit of
playing golf for relaxation while in training. The heat at
Chicago was too intense for an activity as strenuous as
golf, Vidmer wrote, and added:

Dempsey cannot afford, at the age of 32 . . . to lose
any of the strength or stamina he has gained through
the rigorous weeks of preparation he has put in.

Dempsey's object is to build up his energy, not to

have it melted away by the sizzling waves of heat

He declared today that eighteen holes on the links took
too much out of him. It must be explained, however,
that it weakens him only because he takes the game too

seriously.41

 

40James P. Dawson, "Mob Rushes Ring as Dempsey
Drills," New York Times, Sept. 11, 1927, sec. 10, p. 8.

41Richards Vidmer, ”Dempsey Workout Canceled by
Heat, ” ibid., Sept. 14,1927, p.37.

 

120

Sportswriters tend to regard athletes whose ages
have caught up with their physical skills in the same
fashion as they regard injured athletes-~as human interest
stories. Jack Dempsey was the underdog in the return match
with Tunney as it was. To have dwelled on his advancing
age and the accompanying reduction in speed and stamina
before a boxing public that once again had come to admire
and respect him would have done a disservice both to the
public and to Dempsey. As a result, reporters for the

New York Times seized on the smallest events that could be

 

used to make Dempsey seem a humanist. Dawson wrote fondly
of the visit of a small tribe of Blackfoot Indians to the
training camp for the purpose of conferring upon Dempsey
the rank of honorary chief and of the presence in camp of
a teenage boy who had hitchhiked from Florida to see Dempsey
fight. Dawson's story said, in part:
He arrived with nothing but the clothes on his back and
these were nothing to speak of. But when Dempsey saw
the appearance of the lad he had him taken to town,
fitted for two suits, underwear, ties, shirts, shoes
and knickers, and today Dorr was . . . joyous in his
new raiment and absolutely confident Dempsey is the
greatest fellow in the world.42
Richards Vidmer observed Dempsey lounging in front

of a Victrola one afternoon listening to grand opera record-

ings and wrote:

 

42Dawson, "Dempsey Engages in Surprise Drill," ibid.,
Sept. 11, 1927, sec. 10, p. 8.

121

Dempsey is almost as much interested in classical music
as Tunney is in literature. He isn't a musician him-
self, never having been able to master even the
harmonica, but every other member of his family plays
some sort of instrument and Jack is highly apprecia-
tive.

Two days before the Tunney fight, Vidmer also witnessed the
visit of a large group of school boys to the camp from a
nearby community. He filed a story that said, in part:

he was informed that a group of school boys from
Harvey, I11., had called for a sight of the former
champion . . . [so] Dempsey appeared to confront 250
thrilled youngsters, sitting orderly in the chairs on
the clubhouse porch. It was evident that they wanted
to hear him say something, so he did in quite an
oratorical manner.

"Boys, whatever you do, whether you go in for
business or the arts or a professional life," said
Dempsey, "lead a clean, honest life. Avoid the use
of liquor and tobacco. That's the best advice I can
give anyone. Now I want to shake hands with every one
of you."

Whereupon he stood unflinchingly before the rush
and clasped the trembling hand of each of the excited
youngsters.44

The same reporter apparently was convinced that the
years had worked a significant change in Dempsey and that
could have some effect on the fight. He wrote that

The Dempsey of old . . . that is still idolized by the
American fight fan, was a hail fellow well met, who let
the world go by on its own natural course and left an
atmosphere of the unconquerable in his wake.

The Dempsey of old didn't care what any one thought
of him as a boxer, so sure was he of his own prowess

. . . The Dempsey of old sometimes read what was

written about him and if it was pessimistic he laughed.

 

43Vidmer, "Dempsey on Toes after Five Rounds,"
ibid., Sept. 17, 1927, p. 9.

44Vidmer, "Dempsey to Rest Until He Is in Ring,”
ibid., Sept. 20, 1927, p. 23.

 

122

But the Dempsey of today is not so confident. He
wonders what the world thinks of him. He reads every-
thing that is written about him and is obviously anxious
to please the powers of publicity. He is interested
and eager with the sports writers and poses patiently
for photographers.

In the years when he was champion he took his pOpu-
larity as a matter of course. In his present position

. . he wonders just how great is his popularity. He
has become sensitive to public opinion . .45

Although most of the pre-fight speculation was
favorable to Gene Tunney, sportswriters for the New York
Times were both generous and kind in their considerations

of Dempsey's chances for victory. James Harrison wrote

that

it would be particularly fitting . . . if Jack Dempsey
should overthrow a ring tradition that has resisted
the best efforts of John L. Sullivan, Jim Corbett, 46
Jim Jeffries and other masters of the hallowed past.

On the morning of the fight, Harrison wrote, in part:

Sentiment, loyalty, affection--these are responsible
for the strong support that Dempsey is receiving on
the eve of the battle. A very picturesque figure,
Jack has thousands and thousands of friends who back
him to the limit.

Vidmer added, in another pre-fight story that
on the surface, at least, Dempsey appears in as fine

physical condition as he can hope to reach. His eyes
are clear and bright with enthusiasm. His walk is

 

45Vidmer, "Dempsey's Guards Form Solid Wall," ibid.,
Sept. 13, 1927, p. 27.

46James R. Harrison, "Sports Spectacle of Ages
Thursday," ibid., Sept. 18, 1927, sec. 9, pp. 1, 4.

47Harrison, "Tunney Will Defend His Crown Tonight;
Betting Now Even," ibid., Sept. 22, 1927, pp. 1, 20.

123

brisk. His shoulders swing with nervous energy, and in
his ring regalia his muscles ripple and glow beneath a
smooth, brownskin.48
Dempsey, of course, did not win the rematch with
Gene Tunney. His knockdown of Tunney in the seventh round,
after which the champion had by most estimates fourteen
seconds instead of the normal ten in which to regain his
senses, precipitated a controversy that remains one of the
most widely discussed in the history of the sport. Dempsey
stubbornly refused to retire to the most distant corner
before the referee counted the seconds over the fallen
Tunney, voiding any hope that the match would end in a
knockout at that point. The Opportunity was open for
sportswriters to criticize Dempsey as they wished for his
conduct; Tunney had taken advantage of the mistake and had
reached his feet at the count of "nine," a count that
otherwise would have been "fourteen."
Given Dempsey's error, however, writers for the

New York Times generally were understanding, even sympa-

 

thetic. James Dawson's story of the fight indicated that
he may have believed in Dempsey's cause more than in that
of Tunney. He wrote:
On the strength of that colossal mistake of Dempsey's,
it is hard, indeed, to say that Tunney was the better

man in the ring tonight. Rather, the seventh round
demonstrated what many have always contended despite

 

48Vidmer, "Dempsey Is Eager to Enter the Ring,"
ibid., p. 21.

 

124

assertions of Tunney and his associates to the contrary,
that the real Dempsey would mow down the best Tunney
like a cutting machine at work in a wheat field.

all things considered, it can not be denied that while.
Dempsey was defeated, he covered himself with glory.
The following day, Dawson touched on the controver-
sial time issue but camouflaged whatever personal bias he
may have had with a story that said, in part:

The fans, regardless of their Opinions on the question
of fleeting time which proved so costly to a better
Dempsey than many expected to enter the ring, were
satisfied with a hair-raising battle in which Dempsey
was the savage warrior of old, or as near that as it

was possible to get.

John Kieran, the sports columnist of the Times,
had made clear his opinion of Dempsey before the fight,

writing that

In the pOpularity contest he carries all countries by
a rising vote. He is "It" and there is no argument
about it.

Jack Dempsey has "color" in large quantities.
He wore his regal robes of office in a thoroughly
fitting manner. In short, he was the sort of chap who
belonged on the heavyweight throne.51

After the fight Kieran wrote that the victory by Tunney was
the best thing for the boxing game because it proved that

Dempsey had lost the 1926 fight because of age, not because

 

49Dawson, "Gene Tunney Keeps Title by Decision
After 10 Rounds," ibid., Sept. 23, 1927, pp. 1, l8.

SODawson, "Tunney Is Ready for Dempsey Again,"
ibid., Sept. 24, 1927, pp. 1, 10.

51John Kieran, "Sports of the Times," ibid.,
Aug. 26, 1927, p. 13.

 

125

the match had been illegally tampered with. His column,
however, also paid a fitting tribute to Dempsey:
Dempsey put up a great fight. The veteran warrior
still has some of his old skill, most of his punch and
all of his old courage. He is the most pOpular fighter
of this generation, and, as the advertisement states,
"such popularity must be deserved." It is.
A great fighter, Dempsey. And let it be said that
it took a real fighter to beat him . . . 52
Gene Tunney, the native of New York, respected mem-
ber of the armed forces during the World War, and heavy-
weight champion by virtue of two decisions over Jack Dempsey,
hinted at one of the reasons for his rival's irresistibility
to sportswriters in the 1920's--and, by inference, his own
lack of appeal. "Looking back objectively,” he wrote more
than forty years later:
one has to conclude that he was more valuable to the
sport . . . than any prizefighter of his time. Whether
you consider it from his worth as a gladiator or from
the point of view of the box office, he was tops.53
Tunney did not exactly suffer from a lack of

exposure in the New York Times. He was, after all, the

 

champion. On sheer volume of words Tunney may have enjoyed
greater publicity before and after his second fight with
Dempsey, but it is questionable that he stirred in sports-

writers for the newspaper the same intensity of feeling,

 

521bid., Sept. 26, 1927, p. 19.

53Gene Tunney, "My Fights With Jack Dempsey," in
Great Sports Reporting, ed. by Allen R. Kirschner (New York:
Laurel-LeafiLibrary, Dell Publishing Company, 1969), p. 142.

 

 

126

than did Dempsey. Jack Dempsey, for all his faults, had
helped restore public confidence in boxing and had been
instrumental in helping put the city of New York back on
the boxing map. It may just have seemed ungracious that a
New Yorker should be the man who finally took away Dempsey's
championship.

The publicity commitment of the Detroit Times to

the second Dempsey-Tunney match would appear to have been

 

near total. The reports of the paper's own boxing special-
ist, Frank MacDonnell, competed for space on the sports
pages with the stories of writers for the Hearst wire
services and syndicates, with frequent photographs of the
two boxers in various forms of training and relaxation, and
even with daily columns under the bylines of Dempsey and
Tunney, their respective managers, and former heavyweight
champions commissioned to offer their so-called expert
commentary. The logical extension of such a commitment
would seem to be that if the fight had been scheduled for
the Detroit area the Times would have allocated the entire
newspaper to coverage of the event.

MacDonnell may have been a knowledgeable boxing
writer in his own locale, but in the training camps of the
two heavyweights at Chicago he was limited in what he could
convincingly write about. It is doubtful that he had more
than a nodding acquaintance with either Dempsey or Tunney

or with the men who managed and trained them. Based on

127

that lack of familiarity MacDonnell naturally was at a loss
to find significance in many of the daily routines, habits,
and idiosyncracies of the two boxers. The result was that
his reports related both to the boxers and to his readers
at an essentially visceral level.

This is not to suggest, however, that MacDonnell's
reports lacked judgment or propriety; indeed, his style of
writing may have been what readers of the Detroit Times
could best identify with. At the very least, Jack Dempsey
projected a visceral image. An attempt to humanize him as

writers for the New York Times appeared to be doing may

 

well have been lost on readers of the Detroit newspaper.
Examples of MacDonnell's style are numerous. On

one occasion Gene Tunney had addressed a crowd in Chicago

and had attempted to make a semantic distinction between a

prize fight and a boxing match. MacDonnell filed the fol-
lowing report of the incident:

He's an odd heavyweight champion, this man Tunney. The
people can't understand him and neither can the news-
papermen.

He made a speech in Chicago. Here is part of it:

"I am not going to fight here . . . . In fact, I am
opposed to fighting. I am going to engage in a boxing
contest."

Isn't that a pip? . . .

The customers pay to see a fight, not a waltz

Dempsey became the world's greatest box office
attraction because he was a fighter.

He is the peer of all attractiong today because the
pe0ple believe he will try to fight. 4

 

54Frank MacDonnell, "The Truth and Nothin' But,"
Detroit Times, Sept. 3, 1927, p. 9.

 

 

128

After a visit to Dempsey's training camp, MacDonnell wrote

that

And

ing

the

while he didn't look like the Dempsey of old, the big
fellow appears to be in excellent physical condition

and his boxing was far from terrible. Facing fellows
he couldn't open upon, Jack had to pull his socks for
fear of knocking the lads out in the center field of

the race track training grounds.

It would seem to me that he should have a few mates
that he can smack around every once in a while for good
luck, if nothing else. He can't expect to get the
prOper timing by consistently pulling his punches.

the following day, after reflecting on Dempsey's train-
routine, the reporter decided that

Bigger, but not better than in the old days, Dempsey
is care—free and happy, his mental condition seems to
be perfect and his physical condition at this stage
of the comeback journey appears to be what it should
be, everything considered.

So much for the big fellow's mental and physical
condition. I would add, however, that there isn't
reason why he shouldn't be the world's greatest attrac-
tion. He's so human in every res ect . . . he deserves
the plaudits any way you take it. 6

Three days before the fight, MacDonnell returned to

camp of Dempsey for an up-to-date assessment of the

former Champion's condition. As much as he seemed to want

to be convinced that Dempsey was in condition to win back

the

championship, MacDonnell was able only to write the

 

SSMacDonnell, "Jack Dempsey Looks Fair in Workouts,"

ibid., Sept. 11, 1927, sec. 2, p. l.

S6MacDonnell, "The Truth and Nothin' But," ibid.,

Sept. 12, 1927, p. 13.

129

following ambivalent report that nonetheless seemed to imply

that he was a Dempsey supporter:

Soft-looking, but not soft; speedy but not fast enough;

vicious, but not the old killer; a puncher and still

not the puncher of other years; serious and serious

enough for anything--that was Jack Dempsey yesterday.
He shadow-boxed; he sparred; he almost fought at

times and then he punched the bag. When it was all

over everybody at the place considered the former

champion much better than he was against Tunney a

year ago and a whole lot better than he was before

his victorious battle with Sharkey.57

MacDonnell did, in fact, come out in print with
the prediction that Dempsey would win, acknowledging, how-
ever, that his choice was motivated by sentiment. "I
won't be wrong on Dempsey again if he missed tonight," he
wrote, "because he will never pull on another glove if he

is outclassed. After all, he is not a bad fellow to go

58

down with, or win with." Just how emotionally involved

the writer was became evident in his post-fight column:

I haven't any regrets about my mistake in judgment. I
would still rather be wrong and go down with a . .
courageous old righto like Dempsey than be right with
Tunney.
This business doesn't produce a Dempsey very often:
Few have his heart, his killing spirit, his toughness
and his courage.

An improved Dempsey, a vastly improved Dempsey,
fought Tunney last night and lost. It was a crying

 

S7MacDonnell, ”Dempsey Appears Better,” ibid.,
Sept. 19, 1927, p. l3.‘

S8MacDonnell, "Dempsey Picked to Win by MacDonnell,"
ibid., Sept. 22, 1927, pp. 1, 33.-

130
Dempsey that left the ring last night and strong men
and great men weep when they lose. 9
Judging from his writings, MacDonnell believed or
seemed to realize from the start that Dempsey could not
win. Viewed in this context, his stories and columns in

the Detroit Times underscore the contention that he did

 

not personally know Dempsey--or at least that he did not
know Dempsey well--and that he was able only to identify
with the former champion on an idealistic level. Had he
been close to Dempsey their mutual understanding might not
have interfered with his knowledgeability as a boxing
observer and critic. Instead, he covered his unfamiliarity
with subjectivity-~although he at least was not unwilling

to admit it.

 

ngacDonnell, "The Truth and Nothin' But," ibid.,
Sept. 23, 1927, pp. 19-20.

CHAPTER VI

Nearly a half century has passed since the peak
years of the Golden Age of Sports. The intervening years
have wrought countless changes, not the least of which
have been the surpassing of almost all of the feats and
records of Babe Ruth, Red Grange, and Jack Dempsey. Many
sports enthusiasts, in fact, could argue that today's
athletes generally are superior to those of the 1920's
and that Babe Ruth at his best would not have been a
match for the skills of contemporary baseball players,
nor would Grange in football, nor Dempsey in boxing.
Others, of course, could argue that although modern ath-
letes appear to manifest superior mechanical skills they
hopelessly lack the color and vitality of their prede-
cessors.

Neither argument is without substance. There is
no question that technological, economic, geographic, and
social factors by the score have improved and standardized
levels of athletic competition. At the same time, however,
these improvements would appear to have been made at the
expense of the athlete's individuality; indeed, the most
highly prized of athletes by present standards are those

who are willing to subjugate their individuality for the

131

132

good of the team. In recent years some professional teams
have gone so far as to subject their athletes to batteries
of psychological tests in an effort to determine how im-
proved team unity and efficiency might be achieved.

Athletes who today attempt to assert their indi-
viduality often do so at no small personal risk. In
exchange for a colorful reputation such an athlete may be
courting public disapproval, official censure, or, if he
is a professional, the sale or trade of his contract for
that of a less controversial player. Particularly sensi-
tive is the exercise of individuality by a black athlete,
or one of Latin American or American Indian descent.
Although these athletes often are the physical superiors
of their white counterparts, their actions evoke caution
on the parts of sportswriters, broadcasters, and even the
promotional specialists common to highly organized forms
of sport. Any attempt to build or to propagate a colorful
image or to rationalize a controversial one by trading on
aspects or idiosyncracies of black, Latin American, or
Indian character must be weighed carefully against the
recently awakened pride, dignity, and sensitivities not
only of the athlete himself but also of other members of
his race.

Spectator sports have increased in number and
exposure and have expanded in scope so that by their very

nature they tend to stifle heroism. No region of the

133

United States, except Alaska, is without significant repre-
sentation in the major spectator sports. By 1972 more than
ninety professional franchises were active at a major league
level, along with more than 100 colleges and universities
participating in football and basketball at the highest
amateur level. A homogenization has taken place, with the
result that literally thousands of athletes now compete for
the attention that a few hundred were able to share fifty
years ago.

Much of the mystique of organized sport has been
lost. Citizens everywhere can see and watch even the finest
athletes almost at will. Television and radio have made
possible almost immediate summaries of the day's significant
sports activity and the technique of the "instant replay"
affords followers of sports a second, third, or even a
fourth opportunity to see moments or‘ plays of special
importance during a game or match. Moreover, professional
analysts, often former athletes themselves, sit at the
elbows of sports announcers, predicting the next move on
the field below or criticizing--constructively--the pre-
vious one. And the pOpular pre-game and post-game inter-
views reveal the attitudes and emotions of players, coaches,
and managers, not to mention their respective levels of
intelligence and sophistication. In short, the performance,

of today's athletes, no matter how spectacular, are more

easily placed in perspective than ever before.

134

Unlike a Babe Ruth or a Red Grange, the outstanding
athlete today no longer seems to overshadow his deeds;
rather, the deeds now seem larger than the man. The deeds,
in fact, may have become more important than the man. The
time has been reached in spectator sports when the differ-
ence between a profitable and a losing venture no longer is
measured by a full stadium, but by lucrative broadcasting
contracts. And television cares little who scores the
winning point so long as one is scored.

Spectator sports and the mass media long have needed
each other, and, happily, the decision-makers in media have
been willing to invest large amounts of time, space, and
prestige in sport. Newspapers in the 1920's particularly
made extensive commitments to the future of spectator
sports. Various sports reciprocated by producing a host
of exciting, colorful personalities at precisely the time
when the nation was most ready for them.

Not unlike the 1970's, however, the 1920's were
cynical times, and since both sport and newspapers mirror
the times there were elements of cynicism in them as well.
Nonetheless, it is a measure of the commitment of news-
papers to the future of organized sports that, no matter
how sorely tested, their sportswriters never lost faith in
the intrinsic good of their heroes. Jack Dempsey idled
away three years rather than defend his heavyweight champion-

ship, but without any particular handicap to himself.

135

Red Grange defied convention by signing a professional foot-
ball contract, but won vindication even from the New York
Times in the end. And Babe Ruth, who committed sins with
roughly the same frequency that he hit home runs, never
gave newspapers cause to forsake him. Harold Seymour, a
historian of baseball, wrote that
He [Ruth] dallied with women all over the circuit and
also patronized the brothels. . . . His suite was
always well stocked with prohibition liquor and beer.
Two other Yankee players had standing invitations to
his nightly revels. By midnight Ruth, having taken
his pick from among the girls, bid the rest of the
company good night and shooed them out the door.1
And yet, so long as Ruth confined his indiscretions to his
private life he was safe from newspaper criticism.

A latter day sports personality, Jim Bouton, a
former pitcher with several major league baseball teams,
recently broke an unwritten but time-honored rule of pro-
fessional sports and wrote a book about the behavior of
some of his teammates in the inner sanctums of the sport--
Clubhouses, dugouts, and team buses. Bouton told several
stories that were anything but flattering to the images of
professional athletes and, not surprisingly, was roundly
scorned by baseball officials, players, sportswriters, and

some fans. Perhaps goaded by some of the criticism, Bouton

wrote a sequel to the book in which he said, in part:

 

1Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Golden‘Agg, Vol. II
of Baseball (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971),

p. O

136

I think it's possible that you can view people as heroes
and at the same time understand that they are pe0ple,
too, imperfect, narrow sometimes, even not very good at
what they do. . . . You want heroes, you can have them.
Heroes exiSt only in the mind, anyway.

Bouton would have been given an argument fifty years
ago. Journalists of the 1920's took the concept of heroism
in sports seriously and generally manifested an unwillingness
to tamper with heroic images once they were established. By
preserving a certain distance between themselves and the
best athletes the writers declined to risk any disillusion-
ment that might have resulted from closer personal contact.
By these techniques the sportswriters were able to protect
for a time the mystique of highly organized forms of sport
and of sports heroes that is largely absent today because

of ever-widening exposure through the media of mass communi-

cations.

 

2Jim Bouton, I'm Glad You Didn't Take it Personally
(New York: William Morrow 8 Company, 1971), p. 124.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Ayer, N. W. and Son. N. W. Ayer G Son's American Newspaper
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Boyle, Robert H. Sport--Mirror of American Life. Boston:
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Corum, Bill. Off and Running. New York: Henry Holt and
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Danzig, Allison, and Brandwein, Peter, eds. S ort's
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Fishwick, Marshall W. American Heroes: Myth and Reality.
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Gallico, Paul. The Golden People. New York: Doubleday,
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Grange, Harold E., as told to Morton, Ira. The Red Grange
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Heimer, Mel. The Long Count. New York: Atheneum, 1969.

 

Heath, Harry E., Jr., and Gelfand, Lou. How to Cover,
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Kieran, John. Not Under Oath. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
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137

138
Kirschner, Allen R., ed. Great Sports Reporting. Laurel-Leaf
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Krout, John A. Annals of American Sport. New Haven, Conn:
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Lerner, Max. America as a Civilization. New York: Simon
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Meany, Tom. Babe Ruth. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co.,
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National Collegiate Athletic Association. The 1969
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Rice, Grantland. The Tumult and the Shoutigg. New York:
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Seymour, Harold. Baseball: The Golden Age. Vol. II of
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Press, 1971.

Wecter, Dixon. The Hero in America. New York: (3.Scribner's
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Woodward, Stanley. Sports Page. New York: Greenwood Press,
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Journals and Magazines

Curtiss Philip. "Is Fame Becoming Extinct?" Harper's
’May, 1920, pp. 850-851. '

Gallico, Paul. "The Golden Decade." Saturday Evening_Post,
Sept. 5, 1931, p.12. ’

Green, Fitzhugh. "Are Heroes Heroes?" Forum, LXXIX
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Jordan, Lester. "Sports Reporting Was a Scholarly Occupa-
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139

Niebuhr, Reinhold. "Heroes and Hero Worship." Nation,
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"Sports Dig Ever More Deeply into Newspaper's Editorial
Space." Editor 6 Publisher, April 28, 1928,
pp. 44, 46.

 

Newgpapers

 

Detroit Times, Aug. l-Dec. 31, 1923, 1925, 1927.

 

New York Herald-Tribune, Aug. l-Sept. 15, 1925.
New York Times, Aug. l-Dec. 31, 1923, 1925, 1927.

 

. Editorial, Jan. 1, 1920.
Sports Editorial, Jan. 19, 1920.
Sports Editorial, Oct. 4, 1920.

HICHIGRN STATE UNIV. LIBRRR

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