THE GOLDEN AGE OF SPORT

ONLY 13 years ago, after satisfying himself that there must be some absolute limits to human strength, speed, agility and endurance, Brutus Hamilton, coach of the U.S. Olympic team, compiled a list of what he considered to be the "ultimate" in track and field performances. No one, said Hamilton out of confidence based on long experience, would ever run the 100-yd. dash in less than 9.2 sec. or the mile in less than 3 min. 57.8 sec. No one would ever put the shot more than 62 ft., throw the discus more than 200 ft., do better than 7 ft. 1 in. in the high jump, 27 ft. in the long jump, or 16 ft. in the pole vault.

Since then, in every case, someone has.

If there really are any absolutes in sport, they defy recognition--especially these days, when a 19-year-old college freshman has run a 3-min. 51.3-sec. mile, and a 6-ft. 3/4in. high jumper has cleared a bar 17 in. above his own head. Sports records have always been perishable, but in the U.S. today the spoilage rate is enormous. Athletes have never been so skillful, competition has never been so tough, and the U.S. appetite for sport has never been so insatiable.

In an affluent society, one out of every five Americans is a steady customer at the local bowling alley; one out of 20 plays tennis or golf. And when they are not playing, Americans are watching: last year attendance at major-league baseball was up 12% to 25,182,209, pro football was up 17% to 7,497,407, and horse racing--the most popular spectator sport of all--drew 68,495,454 fans.

Then there is TV. On a typical weekend last month, New York stations offered six baseball games, a soccer game, two horse races, a golf tournament, an auto race, and a surfing competition. As for the papers, on Sunday, the Los Angeles Times usually allots 48 columns to sport--compared with 14 to music, 13 to theater, eleven to movies, seven to art.

With that kind of exposure, sport has become big business. Today the payroll of an average pro football team is $1,000,000 a season--and of 24 teams in the two pro leagues, only two lost money last year. Americans spent $46.5 billion on leisure activity in 1966; $40 million went for bowling balls, $150 million bought golf equipment, $2.8 billion was accounted for by boats and operating costs.

Exit the Good Little Man

For sport's biggest bills, television more often than not picks up the tab. And sports of all sorts bring out the best of TV--the imagination of its reporters, the skills of its engineers. Parabolic microphones pick up a quarterback's signal changes; they eavesdrop on conversations between a golfer and his caddy. Other gimmicks such as "instant replay," "stop action," and the split screen help to heighten drama and educate the fan in the intricacies of the game.

Through TV, millions of Americans have become thoroughly familiar with sports they once knew only through the often unreliable and overblown prose of sportswriters. "I'd travel around in the 1920s and 1930s and tell people that pro football was a good game," says Illinois All-America Red Grange, "and they'd laugh at me. 'Did you ever see a game?' I'd ask them. 'Well, no, they'd say." Former New York Giants Halfback Frank Gifford, who did not come into the National Football League until 1952, remembers going home to California after the season was over and having his friends ask: "Where have you been?"

Today the big-time games and the best pros are well-known at every wide spot in the road that boasts a TV receiver. And television has done more than merely educate the fan; it has improved the player. Babe Ruth may have been a hero to kids who never saw the inside of Yankee Stadium, but most of those kids never saw the Babe. Today, youngsters anywhere in the U.S. can see their heroes, watch them play, and copy their style. "Television," says University of Florida Football Coach Ray Graves, "is the best teaching aid any coach could have. My kids are forever trying a play they saw the pros use."

What is more, they have the muscle to make the play work. With vitamin pills a staple on his breakfast table, and a well-balanced diet to nourish him all through his youth, the average U.S. college freshman of the '60s is half an inch taller than his father, and still growing. It is no surprise, says Vince Lombardi, coach of the pro champion Green Bay Packers, that "today's football player is bigger, faster and sharper mentally." Today's baseball player is bigger too. In almost every sport, the good big man is displacing the good little man. For those who are not big enough, or energetic enough, modern science lends a hand. Green Bay's Lombardi claims that he can put 15 lbs. of solid muscle on anybody with a carefully supervised program of weight lifting and isometric exercise. Florida's Graves feeds his football players a drink called "Gatorade," which tastes like weak lemonade but is really a combination of glucose, sodium phosphate, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, calcium cyclamate and citric acid. It was designed by scientists to replenish the chemicals that are burned up by the human body during strenuous exercise.

No Dope Necessary

So much can be done to boost an athlete's performance that some are tempted to do too much. It is one thing for a swimmer to shave all the hair off his body to make an infinitesimal change in the resistance he offers to the water; it is something else again for "bennies," "dexies" and other assorted pep pills to pile up on the locker-room shelf. Almost inevitably, the International Olympic Committee announced that before the 1968 games in Mexico City all athletes will be carefully checked lest they use any stimulating dope.

Dope is hardly necessary. Today's competitor has no end of perfectly legal aids. His equipment has improved, with spectacular effects. The old hickory or ash vaulting poles have given way to bamboo, steel, aluminum and fiber glass, and with each change vaulters have soared ever higher, until the world record is now 17 ft. 61 in. -- more than a foot and a half above Hamilton's "ultimate" limit. The foot ball has been narrowed and shortened twice since 1930 to make it easier to hold and throw; and each alteration in its shape has contributed to the wide-open passing game of today's pros. In baseball, oversized fielder's gloves with all-but-magnetic pockets have had a noticeably negative effect on batting averages. The lively "rabbit ball" has almost everyone swinging for the fences, and the modern game has a pragmatic maxim: "Singles hitters drive Chevrolets; home run hitters drive Cadillacs." In golf, whippy steel, aluminum and fiber glass golf-club shafts have replaced the wood of 35 years ago, and today's high-compression balls allow even a Sunday duffer to dream of belting one 300 yds. off the tee--something Bobby Jones never did.

Skiing, say the experts, has advanced 30 m.p.h. in 30 years; metal skis, lightweight safety bindings, improved waxing and modern stretch suits have all aided that advance. Even foot racing has new and faster tracks, to say nothing of better shoes. In 1960, University of Oregon Coach Bill Bowerman developed shoes that weighed only 4 oz., compared with 6 oz. for the old "lightweights." The difference might seem minor, says Bowerman, "but you know what it meant in a mile race? The runner was lifting 200 pounds less." Now a German firm has produced a 2 1/2 oz. shoe.

Beyond equipment, there is the matter of modern training. Athletes have always trained, but never so scientifically, so intensely. Glenn Cunningham, who set a world mark of 4 min. 6.8 sec. for the mile in 1934, used to call it a day after a lazy three-mile practice run; Jim Ryun, the University of Kansas sophomore who last year lowered the record to 3 min. 51.3 sec., runs at least twelve miles a day, lifts weights to increase lung capacity and competes against sprinters in relays to sharpen his speed. No longer do athletes worry about becoming musclebound, says Chemical Engineer George P. Meade in Athletic Records: The Whys and Wherefores. They no longer fear that exertion may damage their hearts; it undoubtedly strengthens them. Quite possibly, says Meade, "the current upsurge of record breaking owes its incidence to adoption of body-building training methods more than to any other single factor."

But other factors are also vital. Coaches, for example, have changed along with athletes. In the first place, there are more of them. "I didn't even have a football coach in grade school," recalls Red Grange, who contributed so much to the early success of pro football. "I only had one in high school. Today, there are two or three in grade school, five in high school, and the last time I visited the University of Illinois, there was a coach for every specialty."

Today's specialist coaches, as Meade points out, are usually "trained physiologists, doctors of philosophy, specialists in some allied field, rather than merely former athletes who are teaching a skill they learned arbitrarily." Perhaps most important, they are first-rate instructors--"much better than we are on every count," says Rolfe Humphries, poet and former professor of English at Amherst. "They know their students better, their standard is perfection. Did anyone ever hear of a coach telling a player to go in and sort of make a 'gentleman's C kind of tackle; or a halfback to kind of express his personality with a fumbled punt?"

No More Minors

The growth of the new sporting excellence, to be sure, has been accompanied by a galloping commercialism that, many sportsmen insist, outweighs the benefits. And TV draws the bulk of the blame. It is an unfortunate truth that under the baleful glare of the big eye once lively segments of American sport are disappearing entirely. The small boxing clubs, where aspiring fighters used to learn their trade, are virtually gone now; they were no competition for Friday-night bouts on the home screen. Baseball's minor leagues have been decimated, their gate receipts dwindling to nothing, as fans stay home to watch the big-leaguers for the price of a few pennies worth of electricity.

The loss is more than sentimental; the death of the minors, for example, means that the pool of trained talent for the majors has all but dried up. The big leagues are competing with pro football and basketball in paying big bonuses to untried college athletes who are impatient to make the team in their first season--and likely to quit if they do not.

Football, basketball, hockey and soccer add another area of controversy as fans and players alike loudly resent the extra time-outs that have to be called for TV commercial breaks. After a game in the newly founded National Professional Soccer League, which has been blessed with a $1,000,-000 contract from CBS, one of the referees admitted that eleven of 21 fouls he had called were patent phonies: they were the only way the TV commercials could be fitted in. To handle that part of the job, the referee said, he was equipped with a loaded starter's gun, a radio receiver and a golf counter to keep track of how many times he stopped play. He was so weighted down with equipment that he could hardly keep up with the game.

But the answer to all such complaints is unequivocal: without TV, those games would not even be played. TV pays the bills, and without it there would be no professional soccer in the U.S., no American Football League--nor, if anyone cares, any roller derby. One of the reasons that National Football League teams have so little trouble meeting their payrolls is that each of them collects $1,250,000 a season from CBS. Even golf, which hardly qualifies as a spectator sport, has been made just that by television. If it is already running the risk of overexposure, it has also made millionaires of the likes of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, and provided a good living for countless other young pros who might otherwise be selling golf balls or used cars. Randy Glover, 25, who ranked 51st in the official money-winning standings last year, earned $20,792.58--$1,000 more than Sam Snead collected when he was the No. 1 money winner in 1938. Dave Stockton, 25, who beat back a challenge by 54-year-old Ben Hogan to win last week's Colonial National Invitation tournament in Fort Worth, picked up a check for $23,000. That was $18,000 more than Hogan collected when he won the same tournament in 1959.

Since the gate is bigger, few will criticize athletes for getting a man-sized share of the take, for making as much money as they can out of doing something they do well. Even so, all those hairspray and razor-blade commercials make more than a few fans long for the good old days before CBS owned the Yankees and NBC owned Arnold Palmer, before athletes had unions and business managers, when their main reason for playing was sheer love of the game.

Oldtime Giants Catcher Chief Meyers sums up in The Glory of Their Times, Lawrence S. Ritter's admirable book about the early days of the big leagues. "The ballplayers are all businessmen now. They've got agents and outside interests and all that sort of thing. We played for money too. Naturally. That's how we made our living. But mostly we played just for the love of it. Heck, most of us would have paid them just to let us play. We loved baseball."

Others echo the same fear that an eye on the TV dollar is no substitute for a heart in the game. "I don't know how to put it in words," says ex-Pitcher Dizzy Dean, who has never in his life been at a loss for words. "There is too much big money in television; it is changing sports all around. Instead of learning the fundamentals, kids in the Little League are thinking of that half-million-dollar price tag. Wouldn't they be better off just playing for the fun of it?"

No More Amateurs

Perhaps. But that big money contributes a great deal. And U.S. sport is none the worse because TV's expensive insistence on excellence has turned true amateurs into a vanishing class--unless the statistics include "amateur" tennis players who get $9,000 a year from the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association for playing on the Davis Cup team, or the track stars who compete for phonographs and TV sets. "Professional" is no longer a term of derogation; it is a synonym for superb. No longer does the golf pro come in the back door of the country club; he may even own the club. The professional baseball player no longer travels coach on a train; he flies by jet. It is no longer a shameful act for a Bill Bradley --a banker's son, an Ivy Leaguer, a Rhodes scholar, a student of philosophy, politics and economics--to sign a pro basketball contract. Not when the New York Knickerbockers are willing to pay him $125,000 a year.

Only a few decades ago, when most sports were the province of the rich, baseball--the one game any kid could play on a sandlot--was the National Pastime. Today, in an affluent democracy, when just about everyone can afford the pastime of his choice, no single game, but sport itself has become the nation's favorite. It also has become an honorable profession, open to every class and every race. It has produced a new type of professional athlete--admired, socially acceptable and remarkably well educated. Quarterback Charley Johnson of pro football's St. Louis Cardinals is currently studying for a Ph.D. in chemical engineering; Frank Ryan of the Cleveland Browns already has his Ph.D. (his dissertation: "A Characterization of the Set of Asymptotic Values of a Function Holomorphic in the Unit Disc"), and during the off season he is an assistant professor of mathematics at Case Institute of Technology. Coach Harold Laycoe of the Portland, Ore., Buckaroos says with wonderment: "We even have a sprinkling of college graduates in pro hockey now. When I broke in, in 1945, there was a sprinkling of players who had completed grade twelve."

Which is another way of saying that sport is attracting superior talent. Today there is no achievement that cannot be matched, no record that cannot be broken. Contemporary athletes have long since eclipsed the great stars of the '20s and made the '60s the Golden Age of U.S. sport.

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