TOMORROW'S SPORTS?
What do you think will be America's favorite sports activity a generation from now?
We do change our favorites. We have shifted considerably in my time and, in general, things seem to move along faster today than they did then, so we will certainly see some radical changes in the future. Such changes evolve rather slowly as one generation ages and fades away and youth takes over as the control points for sports concerns. They, in turn, will give way to others who develop fan status - an entirely new set of admirers.
Two general classifications exist at all times: those who are content simply to watch sports being played - the spectator types -
and those who actually take a physical part in the game in either an amateur or professional basis. The divisions seem to find themselves in disagreement quite often. That is true, it seems, especially in regard to minor points concerning how the game is to be played and never the twain shall meet, it seems, on some common ground to decide which sport is superior to all others and why. Watching it played and playing are divergent views of the same subject, but so often incompatible. Much of that is due to the realistic fact that the actual player is limited in the number of years he can fully participate whereas the sitter-watcher-commentator endures into octo-years and becomes more and more of an authority on the finer points of the game which does not encourage durable decades of friendship and camaradarie.
I can't claim that I actually remember John L. Sullivan being the first Heavyweight Champion of the boxing world. He was long gone before I saw the light of day. My grandfather, however, spoke of them and of James Corbett, Jim Jeffries and Jess Willard with respect verging on awe which told me he, too, had, at one time, been a sports fan himself even though I never thought I never thought of him in that role. They were “real men”, “fine fighters”, bestial and bare-knuckled.
Pro boxing was the big sport then. I followed it all the way through the Jack Dempsey era, who, suppose, was my first boxer. Then, we had Gene Tunney, who was somewhat different and not quite so “primitive” as were the usual candidates for the Heavyweight crown. There was Max Schmeling to add a Tutonic touch, Max Baer, too - later on, with an Italian influence when Primo Carnera moved in for a short stay and , then, who was it? - Jack Sharkey, whatever lineage he might have been, James Braddock, then along came Joe Louis - 1937 to 1949.
Joe Louis,The Brown Bomber, was almost a venerable personality with many. In fact, he was so popular that I find myself sitting here wondering who followed Joe Louis. He seems to have eclipsed those who followed him in my sports memories. Joe Louis was in the newspaper, the magazines, on radio, in the Newsreels at the movie houses and in filmed specials which followed every major fight in the '30's and '40's.
I remember one special recognition of Joe Louis when he became Heavyweight Champion of the World. The newspaper “The Afro-Amercian” published, I think, in Baltimore at that time, ran a picture of Joe Louis that was unforgetabe.. The paper was printed in a large 11-12 column format and they used the large center folder full signature to picture victorious Joe Louis in what passed for color photograhy in those days - the centerfold spread was almost life-sized. I can still see one of those newsprint poster sheets taped to the glass window of the barber shop downtown and half a dozen other places big enough to hold it.
We were boxing fans. We actually boxed in gym classes at school. I remember being paired up with - or, rather - “against” - a hulk of a guy named Strawn which experience effectively cured me of any fisticuff ambitions I might have had at that point. It think we had “three-minute round”, and those where the longest three minutes I ever spent in all my life.
Football was not too big then, except the annual classic of VPI meeting VMI in Roanoke, Va. On Thanksgiving Day. Baseball was in an October event with the World Series games. Basketball - high school games. The America' s Cup yatch races; The “Indy 500” and speed racing trials on the salt flats out west or at Daytona Beach in Florida. The horse races and sulky cart runs at the fair grounds - those were our sports favorites, but it was not “organized” to anything like the extent we see it today.
Think about sports maybe just a decade from now! What'll it be like, I wonder!
a.l.m. December 7, 2002 [c807wds]
