Sport: Variations

Growth of sport in the last century corresponds with increase of leisure. What may become of sport in the future was suggested last week by five extraordinary variations of it occurring simultaneously.

Tray Race. In London, fruit porters each spring race around Covent Garden into the Strand with wicker baskets piled 12 ft. high on their cork-padded caps. Famed is the Paris tray race, in which waiters wearing long white aprons run around the outer boulevards. In the U. S. nothing on this order appeared until a year ago when Fisticuffer Jack Dempsey sponsored a waiters’ tray race to ballyhoo his New York restaurant. Last week, the second Dempsey tray race made it clear that the pastime would be an annual custom. Rules, copied from the Paris race, specified that each waiter must carry a tray on which stood an empty measuring glass, an empty highball glass, a stirrer and a bottle of whiskey.

The rule against holding the tray with two hands was not enforced. When a plug-ugly protege of Promoter Dempsey dropped a handkerchief, 54 entrants from 15 Manhattan restaurants set off at a run from 59th street down Eighth Avenue to 50th street. Winner, a surly-looking Italian named Dominick Caccippio, got $125, a silver cup and the whiskey from his tray.

Roller Derby is the name given by its inventor, a onetime cinema salesman named Leo (“Bromo”) Seltzer, to the preposterous endeavor, by a group of mixed couples, to outdistance each other in a marathon race on roller skates. Promoter Seltzer invented Roller Derbies— entrance to which can be attained only by winning elimination races in the Seltzer Roller Derby Association, with 3,000 members at $2 each—a year ago, to replace his Walkathons which he said were beginning to grow vulgar. By last winter he had selected a group of teams who competed successively in Chicago (TIME, Feb. 3), Miami. Louisville, Detroit for one month each. With rules patterned after six-day bicycle races, except that both members of the teams are allowed to leave the track between 4 a. m. and 8 p. m. daily, Roller Derby racing made its New York debut last week. Scene was the famed old Hippodrome, which has housed everything from Grand Opera to a circus.

To give his invention—run off on an oval wooden track indoors—a wholesome fresh-air touch, Promoter Seltzer hit on the idea of making the standard distance 4,000 miles, calling the events Transcontinental Derbies, encouraging the illusion by wall maps with bulbs to show the imaginary geographical position of the contestants. Roller Derby teams in the Hippodrome last week were officially racing “the short course” from Salt Lake City to New York, via Route 30. First, after three of the 21 days the Derby is supposed to last, were Millie Duello and her partner Johnny Rosasco.

Hog-Calling, contrary to the notions of most city folk, is a practical necessity on farms, only becomes a standard sport at fairs throughout the U. S. Hog-callers make a noise whose nearest printable equivalent is “Su-ee Su-ee Su-ee—Pig-ee Pig-ee Pig-ee.” If done properly, it proceeds from the diaphragm and, like “squealing up,”, does not tax the vocal cords. At the Michigan State Fair in Detroit last week, champion hog-caller was Pete Hellner of Washtenaw County. Champion in husband-calling, rude distaff equivalent of hog-calling, was loud Margaret Droope of Oakland County.

Lifeboat Racing attracts huge crowds, probably because it costs nothing to watch. Competing crews of six passenger and freight steamships last week splashed off at the starter’s gun, pulled up New York Harbor off the Bay Ridge shore where 250,000 strollers, motorists and apartment residents were watching. Each boat’s weight, ascertained before the start, was 5,500 lb., with crew and ballast.

Soprano Mary Lewis sang The Star Spangled Banner. Postmaster General James A. Farley presented the Robert L. Hague trophy. Recipient was the crew of the swank Italian liner Conte di Savoia who, winning for the second time in three years, outdistanced last year’s winner, a lifeboat crew from the oil-tanker W. C. Teagle, by nine seconds. In last place, far behind the representatives of a United Fruit steamer, a Norwegian-America liner and the Furness Bermuda Line’s Queen of Bermuda, was the unfortunate lifeboat crew of the Normandie.

Squealing Up. In London, United Press Sportswriter Henry McLemore last week announced that England was growing enthusiastic about the pastime of “squealing up.” Wrote Sportswriter McLemore: “I would not be surprised if ‘squealing up’ eventually became very popular in America for it is simple and educational and yet carries a full measure of thrills and danger. Explained simply, the sport consists of nothing more than going out into the woods and ‘squealing up,’ or calling wild animals to your side by making noises which appeal to them. . . . As is nearly always the case in London, the sport was founded on a letter to the editor of the Times. A gentleman had an idea, he wrote in, the letter was published and the game was born. . . . His description of the ‘squealing up,’ with his groundskeeper, of a litter of fox cubs will give an idea of the fascination of the sport:

” ‘We sat motionless behind a bush when the cubs came up and the groundskeeper duly ‘squealed,’ a sound made by suction of the breath through pursed lips. The vocal cord was not used. Two or three more squeals and we had them right up, just the other side of the bush, looking at us. Then one of them sat down to it, the others followed suit and there we were, the six of us, staring at each other like so many owls. When we had enough, the groundskeeper called: “and what’s the game now!” Whereat they all whisked off and vanished in a twinkling.’ “