Imperial Valley Press

TODAY'S SPORT PARADE

BY HENRY MCLEMORE

WALTERBORO, S.C., April 13 (UP)—There must be at least 6,000 young men in these United States who want to be sports writers and do a daily sports column. I know there must be that many because I get letters from most of them asking for information and advice and, if possible, a job. I wish all those ambitious young men were here in Walterboro with me right now. I could quickly disillusion them as to the joys of being a sports columnist. I would do it by putting them in the exact spot in which I am right now. To start with I have a badly injured shoulder and my left arm is all taped and in a sling. Secondly, I have just finished riding 400 miles with a woman at the wheel, which is equivalent to backing 500 miles down a one way street with a man at the wheel. Thirdly, the telegraph office is about to close and I must finish this column before the manager goes home for dinner. And fourthly, I am in Walterboro which, while it is a lovely city and surrounded by the magnificent plantations of Barbara Hutton, Felix Dupont, S. H. Kress and Solomon Guggenheim, is not exactly rampant with material for sports stories. With less than an hour to go before deadline, I am fairly hard put for a subject. So hard put, in fact, that I have been frantically pacing my hotel room, naming off all the sports I know, in an effort to hit upon one about which I can write something. If you had had the great misfortune to be in this room with me you would have heard something about like this: Baseball: Well, I could write about Joe DiMaggio, only I don't know whether he has signed since I last saw a paper. Besides, I wrote about him just a few days ago. Tennis Bitsy Grant just had his appendix out but how in the world can I make a whole column out of that? Nobody cares that much about anybody else's appendix. Polo: This is a hell of a time and place to be writing about polo, although I did see Devereux Milburn at Augusta last week, but I forgot to ask him anything about polo. Golf: I've got a couple of good golf stories but I think I've been writing too much about golf lately. But if worst comes to worst I can do the story Willie McFarlane and Tommy Armour gave about the sand wedge. They certainly put the blast upon that club. Tommy and Willie told me that in the wedge lay the answer to why golf scores were so much lower than they used to be. They estimated the wedge was worth 14 strokes to a professional in a 72-hole tournament. Boxing: There's nothing to keep me from doing a column on Henry Armstrong and Barney Ross, but I can't afford to get out on a limb this early. That reminds me, I never have written Barney to congratulate him on his marriage, and he is one of my favorite fellows in sports. If he were just three years younger, I'd get on that limb right now. Wrestling: Nuts. Automobile racing: After my ride today I can't bear to think about an automobile. Have any of you ever passed a Greyhound bus on a curve with a woman at the wheel? So thousands of you boys want to be sport writers, do you? Right now, I can tell you, I'd much rather be a boy who wants to be a sports writer.