The Hustlers

Maybe they learn it jaywalking across traffic, or in the subway, where a fleet foot and a sharp elbow mean a rush-hour seat. Wherever they pick it up, New Yorkers nourish an abiding admiration for the man who gets there in a hurry. The hustler is their hero, so every winter they set aside certain Saturday nights to cheer the hustlers in the great indoor track meets at Madison Square Garden.

There is always an extra fillip for indoor fans, because on the Garden oval the old adage changes, and a good little man is often better than a good big man. So it was last week in the invitation half-mile run at the golden anniversary of the Millrose Games.

Internal Tick. Skinny Arnie Sowell, the light-foot Pitt Negro with elastic legs, was back in his element, his disappointing summer outdoors and his heartbreaking failure at Melbourne now behind him. He hardly wasted a glance on last year's winner, halfback-sized Tom Courtney of Fordham. On the broad lanes and long straightaways of outdoor tracks, where Courtney could get his weight rolling, things had been different. Sowell had been second best. In the Garden Arnie was at home.

Listening only to the tick of his incredibly accurate mental stopwatch, Sowell glided over the boards, drifting well off the pace. Courtney and the Pioneer Club's Harry Bright drove ahead, hoping to steal the race. But 2 1/2-laps from the tape, Arnie's watch told him it was time. He floated wide on a turn, kicked downhill into his fluid-drive sprint, and the race was over. Sowell was almost 4 yds. in front of Courtney and still moving away when he finished. Time: 1:50.3, a new indoor record, two-tenths of a second faster than the mark made 15 years ago by the late great John Borican.

Seeing Stars. One of the largest crowds (16,000) ever to watch an indoor track meet at the Garden had scarcely time to catch its breath. There were so many stars that nearly every event was a spectacular performance. Items:

P: In the Wanamaker Mile, Olympic 1,500-Meter Champion Ron Delany ran his usual heady race, let Hungarian Refugee Laszlo Tabori and North Carolina's Jim Beatty scrap for the lead, then kicked past to finish 7 yds. in front of Tabori in a comfortable 4:06.7.

P: Just ten years after he won his first national foot-racing Championship, 32-year-old Reggie Pearman ran Olympic 400-Meter Champion Charley Jenkins out of his shoes and won the Mel Sheppard 600 in 1:11. Less than an hour later, he anchored a Pioneer Club mile-relay team that outlegged the N.Y.A.C. and set a new Millrose record: 3:18.

P: Olympians Bob Gutowski and the Rev. Bob Richards matched each other leap for leap in the pole vault, saw the bar push steadily past 15 ft. At 15 ft. 6 in., Richards sailed over easily. Gutowski felt himself brush the bar, watched it bounce off the standards and looked up from the sawdust pit to see it settle in place. Both failed at 15 ft. 9 in. For Richards the first-place tie was his eleventh consecutive Millrose victory.

P: Getting off his blocks with astonishing speed for so hefty a performer, Olympic Decathlon Champion Milt Campbell inched past Olympic Champion Lee Calhoun and set a new indoor record (7 sec.) for the 60-yd. hurdles.

P: After equaling the world's indoor record for the 60-yd. dash (6.1 sec.) in a semifinal heat, Olympian Ira Murchison nosed out the Army's Ken Kave in the finals in 6.2 sec.

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