Sport: Heroes for Pay

Despite the best endeavors of a small group of tough, skillful, highly-paid young men, the city of Boston has never been persuaded to take professional football very seriously. Last year in Detroit, where some 20,000 people were willing to pay up to $3.30 every week out of sheer delight in professional football, the Detroit Lions finished third among the four teams in the National League’s Western Division. Meanwhile, in Boston, even when George Preston Marshall’s Redskins dramatically won the championship of the Eastern Division, Bostonians remained apathetic. This year disgusted Mr. Marshall pulled his football team up from Boston by the roots, transplanted it to Washington.

There the Redskins have prospered. More people watched their first three home games this year than watched all their games last year. A good reason for this interest is George Preston Marshall, who is not new to Washington. Some 50 blue-&-gold Palace Laundries (“Long Live Linen”) on Washington street corners wash enough of Washington’s starched shirts and white collars to supply Mr. Marshall with money for his sporting activities and his spectacular private life. For a brief blazing period he was publisher of Hearst’s Washington Times. Even before that, he was taken up by amused Washington socialites to whom on every social occasion he recalled the fact that he did their laundry.

This Year’s Hero. Another reason for the Redskins’ current popularity is a young man named Sammy Baugh. Last year, a senior at Texas Christian, he was named All-America quarterback. Somewhere in his career a particularly idiotic sportswriter named him “Slingin’ Sam” because he threw a football as easily and as accurately as a baseballer throws a baseball. Slingin’ Sam’s nickname has this year been a double asset. Not only does it fit snugly into headlines, but sports-reading opponents, who always expect a pass whenever Sam Baugh has the ball, are disconcerted to find that Sam Baugh is as capable a runner and kicker as he is a passer. In the six games so far this season 53 of Sam Baugh’s 109 passes have been completed—for a gain of 707 yd. His running record is almost as impressive. Versatile Sam Baugh is the main reason why the Redskins are now only half a game behind the powerful Giants, why in mid-December they may possibly meet the champions of the Western Division—likely to be the Chicago Bears or the Green Bay Packers—for the National League championship.

Last Year’s Hero. In Boston the state of professional football is still as low as in the days of Laundryman Marshall. Last year a half dozen enterprising sports promoters, with an eye on the luscious profits made by the National League clubs, organized a haphazard collection of teams ambitiously called the American League. Before the season ended the league dejectedly disbanded. This year hopeful sports promoters tried again. Most hopeful were a group of Bostonians, who got together a number of obscure ex-college football players, fished for the support of Boston’s many Irishmen by calling them the Shamrocks. By last week the Shamrocks had lost two of the three games they had played, were losing money lavishly. No one expected them to last out the year. Then suddenly the Shamrocks announced that they had signed the celebrated Larry Kelley, Yale ’37, to a remarkable contract.

After being the most publicized Yale footballer since Albie Booth, Larry Kelley last summer turned down a fantastic offer from the Detroit Lions, supposedly because Yale alumni do not yet regard professional football as dignified. Instead, he went to The Peddie School at Hightstown, N. J., to teach history and coach Peddie’s strictly amateur football team. He will continue to teach history and coach football, for he will not practice with the Shamrocks. Every Sunday he will fly to Boston, catch whatever passes the Shamrock backs are able to throw him, then fly back to Peddie in ample time for Lights Out. When sportswriters asked him delicately how much he was to be paid for his first game (estimates ran as high as $1,000) Larry Kelley said, “That’s a fellow’s private business.”

Last week in a characteristic anticlimax Larry Kelley had the grippe. The 7,500 hero worshippers who went to Boston’s Fenway Park to see him—only a third that many people ordinarily go to see the Shamrocks—were disappointed. Larry Kelley was present, but sitting in a box with a muffler round his neck.

Shrewdly timed to coincide with Larry Kelley’s sudden reappearance in the public eye were two articles in the Satevepost by Larry Kelley, “with” Sportswriter George Trevor, Yale ’15. They were written in the offhand style affected by famed athletes in the Satevepost, were full of such autobiographical data as: “I was a shy, sensitive boy. . . . Mother wouldn’t let me try for the team until I filled out. . . .”