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Show WE ARE now moving into a strange field, the fourth dimension. dimen-sion. For us it is the sixth dimension. dimen-sion. It is Mr. Einstein's field of "relativity," "rela-tivity," as applied to sport. It isn'-. complex at all. It is quite simple. It sim- " "'Z-A ply means that all -.-j Hj things are relative, M for the time being. i ( Meaning compari- son- k w A For example, Mike -Jacobs had no Lou- g j is. Conn, Gans, ' ' Leonard, Nelson, . f V Greb, etc., this last ,VV winter and spring, tA i wa? yet Mike had his Grantland Rice best season. Last fall, football had lost many of its leading stars to army and navy, yet had one of its big years, college col-lege and pro. It was a relative matter of "what was left against what was left." The same thing will happen to baseball and racing this spring and summer. Suppose baseball has lost DiMag-gio, DiMag-gio, Feller, Dickey, Cochrane, Gor-don, Gor-don, Keller, Ted Williams, Mize, etc. 1 etc.? The game is still left and the game is greater than any star. I remember the time they used to ask me what was going to happen to baseball when Wagner, Mathew-son, Mathew-son, Lajoie, Cy Young and Rube Waddell were through. What was going to happen when Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth and Tris Speaker turned in their uniforms? Who would take their places? There is always someone ready to step into the vacant spot. It may be a relative spot, but sport works in the same way the universe works, where all things are relative. The Main Point The main point is that all games worth while are far greater than any individual star. For example, baseball, as a game, is far greater than Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Joe Jackson, Christy Mathewson, Joe DiMaggio, Bill Dickey, Hans Wagner, Frank Frisch, Bob Feller or anyone else you can name. Football would have been a great game minus Jim Thorpe, Bronko Nagurski, Sammy Baugh, Sid Luck-man, Luck-man, Pudge Heffelfinger, the Chicago Chi-cago Bears, Notre Dame, and all the high spots you can remember. No Cobbs or Ruths made baseball. base-ball. No Notre Dames nor Chicago Bears made football. No Bobby Jones or Walter Hagen or Harry Vardon made golf. I happen to be a great believer in the game above any individual. When any individual is more important impor-tant than the game, then it isn't the right game. Action, Thrills Still Left This, again, is where relativity comes in. In other words, class is only relative with class. There can still be action, entertainment and a real contest where top class is miss, ing. I agree with my old friend, now dead, one of the greatest competitors competi-tors and one of the greatest sportsmen sports-men I have ever known. The name is Devereaux Milburn, the polo-playing star. "It is the contest and the hard, close competition that makes every game worthwhile," Dev said. "I get more of a thrill ln being beaten in a tough, hard, close scrap than I ever get in winning a walk-over walk-over or a runaway. To me it is the game, the contest, that counts and not so much the final score. I knot this sounds like hokum. I like the sort of scrap where you have tc give everything you have in ordei to win. I still say it is more fun tc lose in that type of contest than it ia to win against out-classed opposition." opposi-tion." Milburn was exactly 100 per cen right, as he usually was. Winning, of course, is an important factor. But it isn't everything in sport. We have planted too much impor tancc on Individual stars, too muct importance on winning, over the greater values that come directly from the game itself. Who. after all, could ever compare Louis and Dempsey, Corbett and Tunney, Grange and Thorpe, Rutr, and Cobb, Vardon and Jones? II can't be done. For there is a relative rela-tive angle that most people overlook. over-look. Time, equipment, training anc many olhcr details. Decades and conditions are a relative. Baseball, minus its many slars, can still have a more interesting inter-esting sca.:nn than it has known foi a lung time. Those Sewnll Boys Those Scv.ell boys from Alabama have done all right, one way anc anolhcr. First there was Joseph Wh! ek-r Scv.ell and his kid brolhei Luke Sewell, from Titus. Ala. Ther here v.-as Rip Sewell from Decatur Ala. Jne Sev.ell stepped from a few mr:r.ths in the minors to help Cleve land win a world scries and then ec along to set a new record for con scrulive games played, up to the Lot Gehrig era. |
