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Show I SPORTLIGHT Fans Prefer Parlor to Bleachers I By GRANTLAND RICE Here's just a dream for you, Born in a land still free, A dream that will still come true, Whatever the dream may be. For a gift the grip of your hand, That is enough for me. Into the Fogs Sport, amateur and pro, is coming com-ing through the deepest fog it has ever known. The larger part of this fog is due to the ever-extending spread 01 the aratt. Another heavy problem is television. televi-sion. There is nothing noth-ing any genius can do about the draft. Its encircling arms are gathering them in between the ages of 19 and 25, the oV. lot-ist a cm Luis Angel Firpo, the Wild Bull of the Pampas. "Firpo was smart financially when he was up here meeting Bill Brennan, Jack Dempsey and others," oth-ers," he said. "He saved most of his money. I recall in the training period for the Firpo-Dempsey fight that Dempsey spent $2,000 a week for sparring partners and Firpo spent about $400. Firpo saved almost al-most every quarter he picked up. "I still recall the admiration he drew from Bill McGeehan for his careful qualities. The Argentine fighter had the ring hangers on wild. They never picked a dime from him. As a result Firpo today has a big farm of many thousands of acres outside of Buenos Aires, stocked with cattle. He is a wealthy man. He has a healthy bank account on the side. He weighs only 240 today against the 223 he weighed against Dempsey. He has taken good care of himself these last 25 years. The fighters around Firpo's time were a careful lot. Dempsey Demp-sey fought for more than $10,-000,000 $10,-000,000 during his ring career. He drew much bigger gates than Joe Louis or anyone else has ever drawn except Gene Tnnney who fought Dempsey twice. 1 Dempsey made money, spent money and saved money. There will be no collections taken up for Dempsey. I've called him twice in the last two weeks only to find that he was on his way west or on his way to Canada to referee some wrestling match. Dempsey gets a kick out of handling hand-ling these wrestlers, now and then exchanging punches where he never gets the worst of it. A wrestler can't punch. Even Frank Gotch was a third-rate fighter. The old Mauler, meaning the guy from Manassa, has a fine home in Los Angeles for his two daughters and his restaurant here has always done well. Tunney and Others Gene Tunney made money, a lot of money, and married money. Tunney certainly has no financial worries and never will have. He is a canny, careful administrator of his affairs. He is also a smart investor. in-vestor. Among the modern group of fighters fight-ers both Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta won't need any benefits. Both have done extremely well financially fi-nancially and haven't thrown too much coin away. "It would surprise you," Eddie Eagan said recently, "to know how much money a number of boxers are putting away each year. Some of them are not too well known. You don't read much about their fights. But they do all right." ' Grantland Rice day by day. But television can be handled. Television Televi-sion can afford to pay large sums but it is a question as to whether any sum can make up for half-filled half-filled stands. Even games televised far away from the home scene can still cut In on other sectors. "A sellout type of game can handle television," one of the leading athletic directors said recently. "But who can tell In advance just when a sellout game will arrive? I think the Big Nine' handled the situation better than any other section. And their crowds were the largest in the country. "Television has hit Los Angeles and vicinity harder than any other place. This city has taken quite a beating, both in its pro and amateur ama-teur football. You apparently can't make their football people see that thousands of followers would rather, have the game brought to them for nothing than pay to travel to the stands. Each year there will be more and more television sets, which won't be any help. It is only on rare occasions, such as the Army-Navy game, that you'll have both television and a complete sellout. sell-out. These occasions will come along rarely in the future." The scope of the draft makes any form of prediction the rankest rank-est sort of guesswork. Predictions Predic-tions are usually guesswork, anyway. But with so many stars in army, navy or air force uniforms, uni-forms, the prophet will be a blind man peering into deep darkness. Fighters in the Black How many boxers nr fighters save their money and have a few rupees for a rainy morning? This query came up again when a traveler from the Argentine ran into an old-timer remembered as |