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Show SPORTLIGHT Some Players Stew in Own Fat I By GRANTLAND RICE SOME YEARS AGO I ran across an old friend. His name was Keene Fitzpatrick of Yale, Michigan Mich-igan and Princeton. One of the great trainers, Keene r N i F 1 1 z patrick be-l'J5". be-l'J5". longed with Mike H" Murphy of Yale gg3ip(";Jj and Pennsylvania. i would also like k , t0 a(j,j Mike Sween- fc3N Hi ey of Hm School f'l'' J and Yale. 1 V I I Murphy, F i t z- LJJJ1 Patrick and Sween- Grantland Bice were three of the best. So was Johnny Mack. The Irish have it. Mike Murphy has been dead a long time. What a coach, ' trainer and philosopher Mike was. Not too many remember bim. He was one of the all- lime greats. Keene Fitzpatrick was another. Keene reported at Yale weighing 161 pounds. He weighed around 164 pounds at Michigan. He was around 164 pounds at Princeton. In forty-four years Fitzpatrick was never two pounds away from 164 pounds. I couldn't tell you the number of times Keene and I met and talked over this matter of weight and age. It is only in the later years I appreciated the logic and philosophy of Keene' s longtime long-time knowledge. Keene could coach and train football, track, rowing and the art of living. "I've never missed a day's work in 44 years," he said once. "I've never been out of condition. There are times when I get upset by watching some of these young fellows from 19 to 22 years old reporting report-ing for football practice. Too many of them are overweight and soft from a summer that certainly wasn't devoted to keeping in condition. At my age, over 60, I could outrun many of them. I've seen them come to early practice at least 25 pounds overweight. One man reported 15 pounds above his best weight. He was of little value most of he year. It isn't hard to put on excess weight. In fact it is quite easy. But try to take it off and see what happens. It's hard, slow work." "A man of 50 or 60 should try to keep his weight close to what it was at 25 or 30. He might be a few pounds heavier, but the difference should be slight." There were more than a few young fellows this past September who would have given more than a trifle to be in better shape when football's practice opened. When you have to spend most of your time lopping off 10 or 20 pounds the punishment more than fits the crime. But it is twice as tough 20 or 30 years later. Tack Hardwick's Example . Those who feel Tack Hardwick's recent death more than anyone else are the Boston kids. I have just had a letter from one of the head men of one of Boston's leading boys clubs. "I only wish," he said, "that every athletic star in this country coun-try could only follow Hardwick's Hard-wick's example. Here was one of Harvard's all-time greats, living, when he cared to, in a wealthy, exclusive society. Yet he had been the most active member of our club for the last 28 years. No one had worked harder. 'Tack came to almost every meeting to talk and mix with the kids. They loved him and he loved them. Not long ago we had t6 have 27,000 folders that were badly needed. Tack paid for them all. With Tack it was ail a work of love. Only two days before his sudden death, he dropped into the office. of-fice. " 'I've had a lot of lucky breaks,' he said. 'But I can tell you this I've gotten a bigger kick out of the little I've been able to do for these kids than all the honors I've ever known wearing that big H on my crimson sweater. I wish a lot of other former athletes would do all they could for this younger generation. genera-tion. We have never given them a break." This comes from the Hard-wick Hard-wick that I knew so long. If former athletes, former stars, can't help the kids no one else can. The boys certainly get little lit-tle help from the politicians, whose main interest is a government gov-ernment pay check. The kids today get their thrills from the stars of football, baseball, base-ball, boxing, golf, tennis, track, etc. It has already been proved that a big part of juvenile delinquency is due to senior stupidity. Sport has done a fair share in helping the juvenile tangle. It has done a bigger share than any other form of our social organization. But the raw fact is that the so-called so-called civilization we know today has never approached the dream of Tack Hardwick and others who understood the problem of today's youth in the big cities. |