Sport: Mean Kind of Sport

To keep gamecocks and hunt the fox, To drink the punch and whisky, We fear no locks, we’ll train the cocks And care not if it’s risky.

—Old song

One morning last week at exactly 10:04, 200 people enjoying their favorite sport in a California orange grove were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Captain Walker Hannon and 13 deputies from the Los Angeles sheriff’s office. The sportsmen fled wildly through the trees, but the sheriff’s men rounded up 23 men, two old women selling sandwiches, a small boy who had dropped by “to have some fun,” and 40 chickens, including Six-to-One Frank, Five-to-Three Vero and Even-Money Ason, three champion fighting cocks.

Next day the human culprits were haled into court and fined $25 apiece. Said Hannon: “It’s a mean kind of sport.”

In the Barrel. Cockfighting is illegal in every state of the Union. Nevertheless it is still an undercover sport in the U.S., and currently enjoying a lively vogue in Southern California.

For three years the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has been fighting the cockfighters. S.P.C.A. officials estimate that a secret syndicate of 18 to 20 “big-wheel” promoters in California operate a cockfight business running to more than a million dollars annually. With the efficiency of an underground boxing commission, “the syndicate” coordinates matches in “mains” (bigtime cockpits) at Bakersfield, San Bernardino, Monterey, Visalia and El Centro, issues guides to lesser known pits in vineyards nearby. It also keeps tabs on championships, betting odds and bird prices, buys off the law when it can.

Betting at the fights, say the authorities, runs to seven figures a year and purses of $5,000 are common. At a raid in El Centre last year, S.P.C.A. men found one bookie stuffing the stake on a single) bout into a 50-lb. nail keg and ramming the overflow down into the keg with his foot.

K.O. Is Curtains. The fighters command big-league prices. An untried young cock can be bought for as little as $50. But once his training muffs (chamois coverings to protect his spurs) have been removed and replaced by lethally pointed steel “gaffs” and razor-edged “slashers” the price rises fast. There are few Joe Louises in the cocking main, where a k.o. means curtains for the loser, and birds who survive five or more fights can bring up to $15,000.

Like horseplayers, cockfighters are apt to defend their sport on the ground that they are “improving the breed.” Their shoptalk is spiced with argument on the merits of reds, doms, warhorses, and other leading breeds. But the lure of the main time & again is not that academic; it is the vicarious thrill in a bloody contest that gives and asks no quarter.