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Show SPORTUGHT ' In Prime, Jeffries Had No Equal ! By GRANTLAND RICE . A FEW DAYS AGO big Jim Jeffries Jef-fries celebrated his 75th birthday birth-day at Burbank, California. Quite bald, with his left side partially paralyzed from a stroke, big Jim knew little about boxing. But you can write it down that from 1900 through 1905, Jim Jeffries was a great fighter who certainly doesn't deserve to be shoved as far down the list as many have placed him. e e Greasy Neale Reports It seemed rather logical that the best man to Interview about this professional football situation was the coach of the best National is still quite a husky citizen. How good was big Jim in his prime? He must have been pretty tough on June 9. 1899, when he ! knocked out Bob Fitzsimmons a t Coney Island, for League team the last two years. His name is Greasy Neale. He doesn't answer to Earl. Greasy won the big title with his Philadelphia Phila-delphia Eagles in 1948 and 1949. lie won the first In a raging snow tornado and the second in the middle of a California cloudburst with a team that was at its best on a fast field. There may be smarter coaches around than the often querulous queru-lous Mr. Neale, but I can't remember re-member their names at the moment. Greasy qualifies as a typical member of the coaches guild, since he is just about as pessimistic pessimis-tic as Frank Leahy of Notre Dame or Red Blaik of Army. To these two, every silver lining has a cyclone cy-clone cloud, and the only light, frivolous tune they enjoy is Chopin's Chop-in's Funeral March. For some unknown reason Greasy Neale is always frowning. He even frowns at his best pal, Steve Owen, who gave Greasy more football trouble than anyone else when Steve had a few players. play-ers. "What about 1950 for the pros?" I asked Greasy. "I could only draw the 13th man in the draft," Neale said. "I have to stand pat." e The Heaviest Pressure Baseball has two managers this season who happen to be carrying the heaviest burdens upon their broad backs. These two overburdened overburd-ened men are Joe McCarthy of the Red Sox and Burt Shotton of the Dodgers. They have been credited credit-ed by the majority with the best teams in their two leagues and they have been picked to win far and wide. McCarthy is the one that has the heaviest load. Cleveland stopped him by a game in 1948. The Yankees stopped him by a game in 1949. This makes the third time in a row that the bulk of the selectors have named the Red Sox as the team most likely to succeed and each year their records bear out the winning predictions. Grantland Kicetnt was jennes 11th fight. He had been Corbett's sparring partner two years before when Jim was training for Fitzsimmons Fitz-simmons and he was only 24 when he stopped Red Robert of Cornwall. Corn-wall. Just where Is Jeffries' place In the ranking list ot heavyweights? heavy-weights? It Is on record that by 1905 he outclassed the field so far that he had to retire. It was a Joke to suggest any challenger. It is also on record that he was a bald-headed fat man when he tried to come back against Johnson. John-son. Jim weighed 285 pounds when he started training for this fight. The first time I saw Jim Jeffries was in 1903 in Atlanta. He had just come from under a shower and I thought I was in the same room with a grizzly bear. He was 6 feet 2 he weighed 215 pounds and thick, black hair covered his legs and body. He was then one of the finest athletes I've ever seen. He could high jump around six feet and he could run the 100 in 10 flat. I saw him work out one afternoon after-noon and he gave a remarkable exhibition of foot and hand speed. "What few people know," Jim Corbett told me one day, "is that by the time of our second fight Jeffries had become be-come as good a boxer as I was. I have never seen a fighter fight-er improve as he did. You couldn't hurt him with two axes, he was dead game and he could punch. Jim Jeffries was a great fighter when he retired in 1905, as great a fighter as I have ever seen. Maybe the best of them all. I couldn't name anyone to even hurt him, much less beat him." And Corbett saw Jack Dempsey wreck Jess Willard. Corbett had a deep and profound respect for Jeffries Jef-fries as a fighter before he retired. re-tired. There are few left who saw Jeffries Jef-fries work in his prime. To most of the modern experts he was a lumbering, lum-bering, floundering giant who |