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Show ""HICAGO is steaming up for the hottest midsummer sport carnival carni-val in recent history. First, there will be another big-money big-money All-American open golf tour- ing heavy cash, j Then the all-star j ball game ar- I rives, when there will be an entirely different attitude on the part of the Na- : tional league for j a big change. While these J 3 maneuvers are GrantlandRice taking place, Tony Zale and j Rocky Graziano will begin the final ! stages of their training, for what should be boxing's best show in many years. Certainly Tony and the Rock topped the book last summer, sum-mer, including two heavyweight championships. And the flop there wasn't Louis' fault. It belonged entirely en-tirely to a pair of palefaces known as Conn and Mauriello. After the Zale-Graziano melee is out of the way, the $100,000 Arlington Arling-ton classic will arrive. This may be one of the biggest races of the season, coming along at a high spot of the racing year. So hers we have Chicago crowding crowd-ing in golf, baseball, boxing and racing, rac-ing, all in the championship mold, through a three-week stretch. The Zale-Graziano meeting will be the standout. It should be one of the most dramatic middleweight contests in the long history of the ring. It may not carry all the fury and destruction of their first meeting, meet-ing, but it can't miss as a thriller. There have been some great middleweight mid-dleweight fights in the past, but none had the color this pair can take into the ring. And you can wager a few sesterces sester-ces this time that the National league isn't going to concede the all-star all-star game in advance. ... Star Coach Missing Spring football practice, . which draws little publicity despite the many thousands getting ready for next fall, has an absent star who will be missed badly in the home of the Crimson Tide. His name is Frank Thomas, Alabama's able leader, who has had to retire because be-cause of illness and now is the athletic ath-letic director of the southern institution. insti-tution. Red Drew, who happens to be another coach . of class, is in charge of the squad. Sixteen years ago, back in 1931, Thomas succeeded Wallace Wade at Alabama, when Wade left for Duke. An ex-Notre Damer, Thomas was short and stubby with a pair of keen, alert eyes and a thorough knowledge of football in every department. de-partment. Alabama couldn't have picked a better man. For in Thomas' 16 years at Alabama, the Crimson Tide from Tuscaloosa won 111 games against 22 defeats. Five games ended in tie score. In seven bowl games, which include Rose, Sugar, Cotton and Orange bowl contests, con-tests, the Thomas-Alabama record is five victories against two defeats. These are pretty fair marks in big-time big-time competition. It also might be added, that in this period, Thomas developed such all-Americans, or near all-Amer-icans as Don Hutson, Jenkins and, Don Whitmire (later with Navy), Johnny Cain, Hupke, Dixie Howell, How-ell, Bill Lee, Riley Smith, Tarzan White, Holt Rast, Vaughn Mancha and Harry Gilmer. He rates Gilmer, Gil-mer, who has one more year, as the best college passer he ever saw, and predicts a brilliant pro future for his 160-pound back in case he decides to take up professional play. In addition to strong intersection-al intersection-al competition. Tommy had to battle bat-tle his way through a fast-moving circuit that included such stout opponents op-ponents as Tennessee, Duke, Georgia, Geor-gia, L.S.U., Tulane, Vanderbilt and many others who always played for keeps. One reason for football strength in the South has been the quality of its coaches, with such leaders as Bob Neyland of Tennessee, Frank Thomas of Alabama, Wallace Wade of Duke, Wally Butts of Georgia, Bill Alexander and Bobby Dodds of Georgia Tech, Red Sanders of Vanderbilt, Van-derbilt, Henry Frnka of Tulane, Carl Snavely of North Carolina and many others who knew their stuff. With his former aid Red Drew at Mississippi, Thomas made a brave attempt to leave a sick bed and coach his team from a stretcher last fall, an impossible assignment, ... Dixie Hangs On It has been a matter of 19 years since a kid ballplayer by the name "of Fred ("Dixie") Walker reported to the Albany, Ga., club of the Southeastern league. Dixie blew In from his home hamlet, Villa Rica, Ga., at the age of 18. His record shows that In his 18 years of wandering Dixie has been delivering base hits for 13 different clubs. But, with such hitting stars as Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio and others far down the list, Walker is still baseball's leading combination combina-tion hitter, meaning batting average aver-age and runs batted in. |