Dempsey, Harmon Through the Years

Among the books written by George Gipe, who died recently, was “The Great American Sports Book,” a casual but voluminous look at sports in America from the Civil War to the present. Following are some offbeat excerpts from the Doubleday publication:

1888: “John L. Sullivan defeats Charlie Mitchell and returns home in triumph, but Sullivan drinks too much and ends up with a combination of typhoid fever, liver trouble, and a mysterious itch.”

1890: From a sermon against baseball: “Baseball is a traveling contagion that should be quarantined for the public good. The pleasure-seeking spirit weakens and destroys the nobler traits of character. It turns men into dudes and women into dudines.”

1916: “American League President Ban Johnson offers his solution to the problem of hit batsmen, apparently with a straight face: Give a batter hit on the head two bases instead of one, he says.”

1924: “Heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey is challenged to a title bout by Muhammad Ali, who offers to wager $100,000 that he can KO the champ. (The full name of the challenger is Prince Muhammad Ali Ibrahim of Egypt, who possesses some of his later namesake’s promotional ability. ‘The Prince has developed a right-hand blow he calls the “Pyramid punch,” ’ his manager tells newsmen. ‘This blow lands with the force of a falling pyramid and knocks a rival stiffer than a Sphinx.’) Dempsey ignores the challenge.”

1927: On the $25,000 Wrigley marathon swim in the chilly waters of the Catalina Channel in January: “Another contestant, Philip Moore, had encased himself in a half-dozen long-john undershirts, each heavily greased, three pairs of heavy winter drawers tied at the ankles with ropes, and topped off the whole costume with an inch-thick coating of rendered beef suet. When the gun sounded for the beginning of the race, he sank like a stone.”

1935: “On Oct. 18, Vanderbilt football Coach Ray Morrison predicts that someday quarterbacks will be able to curve their passes past defenders into the hands of receivers.”

1941: On the movie, “Harmon of Michigan:” “One reviewer wrote, ‘Though Tom Harmon, as some zealots have held, may be the greatest American since Abraham Lincoln, and a pigskin scrimmage can sometimes make rapid entertainment, this film is about as lethargic as a bench warmer’s pulse. Stout men heave against each other, and now and then the leather oval darts across the open field, but for the most part, “Harmon of Michigan” never gets off its own five-yard line.’

“Even worse was the reception given Glenn Davis and Felix (Doc) Blanchard, the two young men who dominated football action for Army during the war years. Their collegiate playing days over, the dynamic duo decided to cash in with an autobiographical epic called the ‘Spirit of West Point.’ The $200,000 paste-up of newsreel footage and minimum dialogue by the principals was released in late 1947 to less than thunderous applause. Tom Harmon, incidentally, played himself in the movie, thus continuing his record of appearing only in turkeys.”

1961: “Meanwhile, someone somewhere preparing for halftime ceremonies for the coming football season discovered that 1961 looked the same upside down and right-side up, a happy coincidence for bands marching downfield that would not occur again until the season of 6009.”