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Show V J G04ATLAND 1 A NUMBER of service sport de-haters de-haters want to know if it is true that basketball draws in more spectators spec-tators than any other sport. Also whether the estimated attendance of 90,000,000 a year is correct. My guess would be that the combined total of basketball spectators would be well beyond baseball, football, racing and boxing but 90,000,000 is quite a collection of human beings. As a starter it might be mentioned men-tioned that there are many more basketball teams than there are base- . -'"rK J ball or football ' S teams. It happens ft to be a game that & is popular in every $J state in the nation v sj Far West, Midwest, : ;;-- Southwest, South a r and East. r j Ned Irish has yf J proved at Madison , V, V Square Garden that 1 - " vJ he can bank on an GrantlandRice attendance ranging from 15,000 to 18,000 at every performance. per-formance. There are not so many basketball centers that can match this crowd accommodation but there are so many hundreds of places on the map that can range from 4,000 to 10,000 and most of these places are usually packed. For example, Indiana Is dotted with towns whose basketball teams draw more to a game than the entire en-tire population of the town the game Is played in. At least that Is what Indiana experts and other camp-followers tell us. Basketball has never had the chance to compete with an Army-Notre Army-Notre Dame crowd a Michigan-Ohio Michigan-Ohio State gathering a Southern California-Notre Dame test or an Army-Navy show. Many of these games would draw over 200,000 if there was only enough space in which to park the human body lean and fat. I doubt that any basketball game, no matter under what favorable conditions, could lure in 75,000 or 100,000 people. It I am wrong, Ned Irish can correct me. But basketball Isn't played in just a few of our bigger stands. It is played in high schools and in colleges col-leges in YMCA's and churches, in boys' clubs and girls' clubs not in hundreds, but in thousands of spots you never heard about. It isn't a I game scattered all over the map but j packed all over the map. I still don't believe the total attendance at-tendance would run up to 90,000,- 000 but maybe it docs. At least this is an argument that no one can settle, give or take some 10,000,000 spectators. Faster but Gentler Basketball today is a faster and a ! far more skillful game than it was ? when I happened to play on the j Vanderbilt team of some decades ci back. But it isn't as rough a game I ' as it was then. I am not referring j i to any man-to-man contact. In those ! days the gymnasiums were rathei j small and they were heated by a number of radiators or other warm-f warm-f ing appliances around the floor, j One of the main Ideas then was a to bend or pin your opponent ovei ' one of these smoking hot devices 3 until the flesh began to sizzle and i there was an unpleasant odor ol ; burning skin. I still recall sucti ii games where I looked more like a zebra than a human being where s there wasn't so much skin left upon the body and what was left hap-i hap-i pened to be badly scorched. 3 Basketball has come a long waj jj since those pioneer, uncovered wag-j wag-j j on days when the player took quite i a beating, since there were no rules 1 against anything except murder and possibly mayhem. It is all differenl p ' now. There are thousands of basket-v basket-v ball centers that have all the re-i re-i quired room needed that have 1 accommodations for spectators. In those earlier days, basketball i was largely a game intended for the s ' swift. The swift are needed today e , But I can't recall facing any op r ponent over 6 feet 2, where today t j feet 2 is bordering often on the mid' get side. There were certainly no op 1 ponents ranging from 6 feet 7 to f ! feet 9. These service debaters always ' want to know whether or not basket oall is the fastest game. Basket I ball is faster than football or base I ball much faster but not as fas' as hockey where the players havt the advantage of Ice and skates, fi I basketball game played on ice witi i skates would be the all-time top foi speed and all around agility. Aftei all, skiing is the fastest sport. With out ice or snow, skates or skis, th 1 next fastest sport is the 100-yard 1 dash. j ... I Baseball Immortals I It is amazing, in a way. th( amount of general public interes J future nominations for baseball'! I Hall of Fame have brought about The old-timers, now f0 years oi vcr, have the feeling that their fa ; rorites are being overlooked b founger generations. These old r .imcrs saw Fred Clarke manage th , Pirates 40 years ago and give l treat outfield exhibition at the sam ( .ime. They saw him as a leader am l playing star. |