Sport: Losers

¶ When the basketball scandals broke like carbuncles on the red neck of Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden (TIME, Jan. 29 et seq.), Illinois’ Bradley University was as horrified as any of them. Last spring Bradley staged its own private invitation tournament, to make sure that its team, known as the “Pride of Peoria,” kept uncontaminated. Last week Peoria’s pride came a cropper. Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan announced that eight Bradley players, including All-America Gene Melchiorre, had been hand in glove with gamblers. Also involved: four members of Toledo University’s team. ¶ For 13 years a group of alleged musicians, calling themselves the Dodger Symphony Band, have tootled happily and horribly around Brooklyn’sEbbets Field. Last week Local 802, American Federation of Musicians, ruled that the SymPhony could no longer play for free (two of the seven-man band are A.F.M. union members). Kings County Judge Samuel Leibowitz, known as “Brooklyn’s No.1 Baseball Fan,” promised to mediate. Said he: “I’m 100% for unions, but these people are not musicians. [Their] loss would rob Brooklyn fans of one of the most important emotional experiences they can have.” ¶ West Germany’s Gottfried von Cramm, 42, still playing the sweeping all-court game that made him a prewar Wimbledon finalist three years running, carried his team into the finals of the European Davis Cup championships with victories over Yugoslavia, Denmark, Belgium and Italy. Last week, in Bastad, Sweden, Von Cramm got his comeuppance. Sweden’s Davis Cuppers Lennart Bergelin and Sven Davidsson crushed West Germany, 5-0. ¶ The University of Nevada joined a growing list* of U.S. colleges who have dropped intercollegiate football. The Nevada regents had good reason: the team would cost $42,000, and last year lost nine of its ten games.

*St. Mary’s, Georgetown, Duquesne, Detroit Institute of Technology, Niagara.