Dispatches From the Sporting Life Page 5

  I agree that from a so-called Jewish standpoint, the Koufax book is disappointing, and I agree with Richler that Koufax protesteth too much in emphasizing that he is not anti-athlete. It is unfortunate that Koufax didn’t control his anger, not only at the Time story but at several minor pieces that preceded it. In his book, Koufax tells us almost nothing about his Jewishness; that he is Jewish is mentioned almost in passing. But he doesn’t owe us any detailed explanations. As a baseball book, and as a text in pitching, I found it excellent.

  I should think that Commentary, in this rare instance when it did touch on sports, could have done better than offer the long-distance musings of a novelist….

  AVRAM M. DUCOVNY, NEW YORK CITY, WRITES:

  I am shocked that Mr. Richler in his treatise on Curve Balls: Are They Good or Bad for the Jews? overlooked Willie Davis’s three errors in one inning behind Koufax in the 1966 World Series—which was one of the most flagrant acts of Negro anti-Semitism since the panic of 1908.

  He does get somewhere in pointing out the Jewish-conspiracy angle in the Norm Sherry–Koufax cabal; however, he does not really go deep enough. What of Norm’s brother Larry—also a Dodger pitcher at the time—stopped from the advice that made a super start because of piddling sibling rivalry? There’s one for Bill Stern!

  And yea, verily, let us weep for the likes of Don Drysdale—disenfranchised WASP—alone in a sea of Gentile coaches whose knowledge of baseball never had the benefit of the secret indoctrination into the Protocols of the Elders of Swat. By the way, what is that resident genius, Norm Sherry, doing today? Have I somehow missed his name among the current great pitching coaches of baseball?

  And finally, finally, the true story of the whispered Greenberg caper, wherein he was visited by representatives of the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and Congress, and the many, many Friends of the Hebrew University, who said unto him: “Hershel, thou shalt not Swat; whither Ruth goest, thou goest not.”

  I am looking forward with great anticipation to Mr. Richler’s exposure of Mike Epstein (the self-labelled “super-Jew” rookie of the Baltimore Orioles) who all “insiders” know is a robot created at a secret plant in the Negev and shipped to Baltimore for obvious chauvinistic reasons.

  FINALLY, THAT VERY GOOD WRITER DAN WAKEFIELD WROTE A MOST AMUSING LETTER THAT BEGAN:

  I greatly enjoyed Mordecai Richler’s significant comments on Sandy Koufax, and the profound questions he raised about the role of Jews in American sports. Certainly much research still needs to be done in this area, and I hope that some of the provocative points raised by Richler will be picked up and followed through by our social scientists, many of whom are capable of turning, say, a called strike into a three-volume study of discrimination in the subculture of American athletics.

  I REPLIED:

  The crucial question is, Did Hank Greenberg hold back (possibly for our sake), or was the pressure too much for him? Mr. Adesman, obviously a worldly man, suggests that Greenberg couldn’t have held back, because of “the material gain he could have realized” by hitting sixty home runs. This, it seems to me, is gratuitously attributing coarse motives to an outstanding Jewish sportsman.

  Mr. Heft is stunned by my flattering notion that Greenberg might have placed the greater Jewish good above mere athletic records and goes on to nibble at a theory of Jewish anti-gamesmanship based on our parents’ “running away from pogroms.” This theory, clearly unattractive if developed to its logical big league conclusion, would surely have resulted in a more noteworthy Jewish record on the base paths. Mr. Heft is also of the opinion that if Walter Alston keeps a Jewish calendar on his desk, it is because he is a good administrator. Yom Kippur, Mr. Heft, comes but once a year, and surely Alston doesn’t require a calendar to remind him of one date. If Koufax had also been unwilling to take his turn on the mound on Tishah-b’Ab or required, say, a chometz-free resin bag for the Passover week, then Alston would have had a case. As things stand, the calendar must be reckoned ostentatious.

  About Kermit Kitman: I’m afraid his poor hitting had no racial origins, but was a failure all his own, regardless of race, colour, or creed. His superb fielding, however, was another matter: a clear case of the overcompensating Jew. Briefly put, Kitman was a notorious chapper—a grabber, that is to say, any fly ball hit into the outfield had to be his fly ball, if you know what I mean.

  Mr. Kintisch errs. I admire Koufax enormously and shall miss him sorely this season. He was undoubtedly the greatest pitcher of our time, and yet—and yet—now that he has retired so young, is it possible that carping anti-Semites have already begun the whispering campaign: great, yes, but sickly. Without the staying power of Warren Spahn. An unnatural athlete.

  Jerome Holtzman, a dazzling intellectual asset to the sports department of the Chicago Sun-Times, raises darker questions. Greenberg, he says, would never have held back. He “didn’t hit sixty because pitchers stopped giving him anything good to hit at—probably because he was Jewish….” Now there’s something nasty even I didn’t think of: the possibility that Bob Feller, Red Ruffing, and others threw bigoted anti-Semitic curveballs at Hank Greenberg while a later generation of American League pitchers fed Roger Maris pro-Gentile pitches…. Next season I would implore Holtzman and other Jewish baseball writers to keep a sharp eye on the racial nature of pitches thrown to (or God forbid, even at) Mike Epstein.

  As for Time, if it is not anti-Semitic, then it is certainly Machiavellian; otherwise, why second-best Juan Marichal on a cover last summer when Koufax was also available? Either as a back of the hand to Jewish achievement or as a shameful, possibly Jewish-motivated, attempt to apply the famous Time cover jinx to the one Gentile who might have won more games than Koufax.

  Messrs. Ducovny and Wakefield are another matter. They think I would joke about Jews in sport, which strikes me as presumptuous.

  Mr. Ducovny cunningly introduces Willie Davis’s three errors behind Koufax in one inning and immediately claims this was a case of Negro anti-Semitism. Not necessarily. It depends on whether Davis dropped the three fly balls in his character as a Negro or in his office as an outfielder. Me, I’m keeping an open mind on the incident.

  On the other hand, Mr. Wakefield is right when he says there is much more research to be done about Jews in sport. Not only Jews, but other minority and out-groups. Allan Roth, pace Jerome Holtzman, may border on genius in his field, but though it may seem to some fans that baseball is already stifled with statistics, these are only statistics of a certain kind, safe statistics. It has been left to me to establish, haphazardly I admit, the absorbing statistic that homosexuals in both major leagues prefer playing third base over all other positions. As a group, they hit better in night games and are more adroit at trapping line drives than catching flies. They do not, as the prejudiced would have it, tend to be showboats. They are a group with a gripe. A valid gripe. Treated as equals on the field, cheered on by teammates when they hit a homer, they tend to be shunned in the showers. On road trips, they have trouble finding roomies.

  Finally, since I wrote my article, so unexpectedly controversial, world events have overtaken journalism.

  Sandy Koufax has retired.

  Ronald Reagan has been elected governor of California.

  Tommy Davis has been traded to the Mets.

  Maury Wills has been given, it would seem, to Pittsburgh.

  I’m not saying that Ronald Reagan, who in the unhappy past has been obliged to play second-best man again and again for Jewish producers, has been harbouring resentments … or is behind the incomparable Koufax’s departure from California. I’m not saying that image-conscious Governor Reagan, mindful of right-wing support, was against being photographed shaking hands with Captain Maury Wills on opening day. I’m also not saying that after Willie Davis dropped the three flies, Mr. O’Malley turned to one of his minions and said, “Davis belongs with the Mets.” Furthermore, I’m not saying that the aforementioned front-office minion could not tell one Davis
from another…. Just remember, as they said in the sports pages of my boyhood, that you read it here first.

  1966

  3

  A Real Canadian Success Story

  “You’ll find this is a good story for you,” he said. “A real Canadian success story.”

  The party at the other end of the line was Ben Weider, president of the International Federation of Body Builders, who was sponsoring the Official Combination Contests to Select Mr. America and Mr. Universe at the Monument National Theatre, in Montreal, in 1960. The competition, according to advance publicity, was going to be the “Greatest Physical Culture Contest ever organized anyplace in the World!”

  “I’ve been to eighty-four countries in the last six years,” Weider told me, “including Red China. But I’m not a communist, you know.”

  Weider was a man of many offices. He was, with his brother Joe, the Trainer of Champions, with outlets in cities as far-flung as Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Vienna. He was president and director of Weider Food Supplements (makers of Super Protein 90 and Energex) and the Weider Barbell Company, and managing editor of Mr. America and Muscle Builder, among other magazines. He was the author of such books as MANGEZ BIEN et restez svelte and JEUNE toute sa vie. In one of his many inspirational articles, “The Man Who Began Again,” he wrote, “True sportsmen always cheer for the underdog … for the guy who has come up from down under—the hard way,” and that’s certainly how Ben Weider had risen to eminence as manufacturer, publisher, author, editor, world traveller, and number-one purveyor of muscle-building equipment and correspondence courses in North America.

  Weider was only thirty-six years old. His brother Joe, who ran the American end of their various enterprises out of Union City, New Jersey, was thirty-nine. They had both been brought up in Montreal’s St. Urbain Street area during the thirties. Skinny, underdeveloped boys, they first took to body development as a form of self-improvement. Then, in 1939, they began to write and publish a mimeographed magazine that would tell others how they could become he-men. To begin with, the magazine had a circulation of five hundred copies. Enthusiasts started to write in to ask where they could get the necessary equipment to train themselves. And so, from their modest offices on Colonial Street, the Weiders began to supply the desired equipment and correspondence courses until, Ben Weider said, they became the acknowledged leaders in the field. Muscle Builder and Mr. America, no longer mimeographed, now appeared monthly in ten languages with, Weider claimed, a total circulation of a million copies.

  In May 1960, Ben Weider moved into his own building on Bates Road, from which he overlooked his widespread empire in the comfort of a most luxurious office. For inspiration, perhaps, there hung behind Weider’s desk a painting of a resolute Napoleon, sword drawn, mounted atop a bucking stallion. It was here, amid trophies, diplomas, and the odd bottle of Quick-Wate (Say Goodbye to Skinny Weakness), that we had our first chat.

  “Why don’t you send me a chapter from your next novel,” Weider offered, “and we could shove it into Muscle Builder or Mr. America. It ought to win you a lot of new readers.”

  Yes, possibly. But, alas, I had to let on, I had never been considered A BIG HITTER by the muscle-building set.

  Weider looked at me severely.

  Later, once I had read some of his correspondence courses, I realized that he had probably spotted my inferiority complex. I was not thinking BIG, positive thoughts. “DON’T BE ENVIOUS OF SOMEONE ELSE’S SUCCESS,” brother Joe advised people who felt inferior. “MAYBE SOMEONE ELSE ENVIES YOU! They are bald… you have a head full of hair. They are fat… you are building a he-man body.”

  Weider was a soft-spoken, courteous, ever-smiling man (“YOUR TEETH,” Joe wrote, “ARE THE JEWELS OF YOUR FACE”) with a high-pitched voice. A conservative dresser, he had surely grasped, just as Joe advised in BE POPULAR, SELF-CONFIDENT, AND A HE-MAN, that it was necessary to MAKE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION A GOOD ONE! Why? Because, as Joe said, your packaging is your appearance. Another thing was that Ben had chosen his hairstyle wisely. It fitted his face! He was not the sort of birdbrain Joe complained about who wore his hair in, say, a Flat-Top Crew Cut, just because “it’s what everybody else is wearing now.”

  Weider, married in 1959, had recently become a father. His boy, he told me, weighed ten pounds eleven ounces at birth. He was also twenty-three inches long!

  “CONGRATULATIONS!!!” I said, grasping his hand firmly. And, even as we parted, I made a note to remember his name, for… “people like to be called by name…. You can make yourself a real somebody by being known as the one man who never forgets names.”

  At home, I had time to read only one of Weider’s correspondence lessons before going to bed. My choice was Secrets of a Healthy Sex Life.

  Choosing the right girl, brother Joe wrote, was vitally important. “Is she sports-minded?” he asks. “Would she frown on you having your own home gym? DOES SHE LIKE WORKING OUT WITH YOU?”

  Weider also suggested that young couples should pray together, use a good deodorant and positive thinking, and keep their weight normalized. He offered sensible advice to young husbands. “Wear clean pyjamas each night…and be sure that you have a variety of patterns in pyjamas. You would not expect her to retire in a torn nightgown with cold cream daubed over her face … hence you should make yourself as attractive as she.”

  All in all, Secrets gave me plenty of food for thought. It seemed a good idea to absorb its message before plunging into other, more advanced lessons, like How to Get the Most Out of People, although this particular pamphlet looked most intriguing. The illustration on the cover showed an assured, smiling young man grasping piles of dollar bills, coins, and money bags. I was keen to learn from him how to use people, but one BIG, positive thought was enough for one day. So, putting the lessons aside, I turned to Muscle Builder. There I read that Chuck Sipes, a recent Mr. America champion, had built his TERRIFIC muscles by using the Weider Concentration Principle.

  A couple of days later I met Sipes at the Mount Royal Studio, where he had come to train for the approaching contest.

  “Been in weightlifting a long time?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Like it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Enjoying your stay in Montreal?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sipes managed a gym in Sacramento, California. He told me that when he started lifting weights eight years ago he had been just another puny guy of some 165 pounds, but now he weighed in at 204. I wished him luck in the contest and went on to chat with Mr. Ireland, Mr. Bombay, and Mr. Hercules of India, all fine fellows. But the man who made the greatest impression on me was Mr. Scotland Sr., otherwise known as R. G. Smith, of the electricity board in Edinburgh. Smith, who was to become my friend, had come to Montreal both to visit his children and to enter the contest—not that he had the slightest chance of winning. Smith was fifty-four years old. He had begun to practice body building at forty-seven.

  The body builders’ exhibition was held on Eaton’s fourth floor on the Friday night before the contest. There was a good turnout. Some three to four hundred people, I’d say. An associate of Weider’s introduced me to Dr. Frederick Tilney, who had flown in from Florida to be one of the contest judges. “Dr. Tilney,” the man said, “has seven degrees.”

  The doctor, a sturdily built man in his mid-sixties, looked surprisingly young for his years.

  “Can you tell me,” I asked, “at what colleges you got your degrees?”

  “What’s the difference what college? A college is a college. Some college graduates end up digging ditches. It’s what you make of yourself that counts in this world.”

  “What exactly do you do, Doctor?”

  “Oh, I lecture on health and success and that sort of stuff.”

  Suddenly Ben Weider was upon us. “Sorry to interrupt your interview,” he said, “but the show must go on.”

  A young French-Canadian body builder mounted the platform to introduce Dr. Tilney. “The doc
tor,” he said, “has travelled all over the world and is one of the most famous editors and writers in it.”

  “Well, then,” Dr. Tilney said, “I’m sure all you washed-out, weak, worn-out, suffering, sickly men want to renew your youth and delay that trip to the underground bungalow.”

  A body builder came out and struck a classic pose.

  Dr. Tilney beamed at us. “We have assembled here some of the finest examples of manhood in the world. We are building a new race of muscular marvels, greater than the Greek gods. We’re doing it scientifically.”

  Mr. Ireland assumed a heroic pose.

  “You too,” Dr. Tilney told us, “can develop a physique like Bill Cook’s and overcome constipation, hernia, hardening of the arteries, diarrhea, heart disease, tuberculosis, rheumatism, and so forth.”

  We were introduced to Ed Theriault and his eight-year-old son, who demonstrated the Weider Chest Expander.

  “This man here,” the doctor said, “is the strongest short man in the world. He can do it—so can you! And look at this boy here. Isn’t he sensational? Body building is one of the finest means of overcoming delinquency. If the kid’s in the gym he’s not in the poolroom. Why, I’m sure none of you want your boy to grow up a skinny runt—puny! You want him to be a real Weider he-man!”

  Some other men came out to demonstrate weight lifting.

  “And just look at the fine equipment, Weider equipment,” the doctor said. “Guaranteed to last a lifetime. No parts to break. Isn’t it something? And I have news for you. Eaton’s is going to make this beautiful equipment available to you on their wonderful convenient time-payment plan. Isn’t that something?”

  Ben Weider applauded.

  “You men out there,” the doctor said, “want to have the bodies the Creator meant you to have, don’t you?”

  Mr. Scotland Sr. asked if he could say a few words.