Hall of Fame Has a Special Kind of Athlete

Harry Heller, who founded the Chicago Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in suburban Northbrook in 1980, bemoans the fact that Jewish athletes are almost gone from the sports pages.

Baseball’s Hank Greenberg, boxing’s Barney Ross and football’s Sid Luckman were stars during the 1930s and ‘40s, when Jewish athletes were common in almost every pro sport.

Not anymore, says Heller:

“Not many Jews go into pro sports for a career today,” he said. “They want to be doctors, lawyers or businessmen.

“There used to be lots of famous Jewish athletes--lots of Jewish boxers and ballplayers. When Marv Levy took the Buffalo Bills to the Super Bowl this year, there was a spark of Jewish pride.”

Heller said that to be inducted in the hall, the player must be identified with Chicago.

Among the 100 honored so far are Ross, a Chicago native who was welterweight and lightweight champion in the 1930s; Luckman, the Bears’ quarterback in the 1930s and 1940s; Abe Saperstein, founder of basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters, and Irv Kupcinet, Chicago columnist and TV talk show host who played college and pro football.

Trivia time: In 1941, why did Joe DiMaggio tell his roommate, Phil Rizzuto, that his hitting streak ending at 56 games instead of 57 cost him $10,000?

What, overtime?Tennis announcer and former player Tony Trabert, talking about today’s pros complaining about having to play back-to-back matches:

“If they want to be paid the kind of money they want from us (at CBS), well, there’s no question we do it to recoup some of that. As a player, I played back-to-back all the time. Boris Becker’s raised that issue. He won’t say it at 19, when he’s broke. He says it when he’s 22 or 23, when he’s a multimillionaire. I don’t think it’s that tough.”

Chill out, George: Suspended Yankee owner George Steinbrenner said of Manager Stump Merrill on Friday:

“I’m just not happy with (Merrill’s) strategy, his choice of players in certain situations. We’ve had a lot of good managers here, like Lou Piniella and Billy Martin. I’d like to have a strong manager.”

Big Red breakup: International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch said earlier this week that the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania could be flying their flags and sending their athletes to the 1992 Summer Olympics. The IOC is expected to readmit the three republics as full members at an IOC meeting Sept. 16-17.

What kind of impact would they have? Estonia and Latvia’s contributions would be doubtful, but at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, 24 Lithuanian athletes who competed for the Soviet Union earned medals. Four of the five starters on the Soviet men’s basketball team, which beat the United States, were Lithuanian.

Newk’s bonus: In 1956, Don Newcombe of the Dodgers won 27 games--18 of them complete games--and was the first winner of the Cy Young Award.

His salary that year was $32,500. After the season he asked General Manager Buzzie Bavasi for a $12,000 raise.

“We went back and forth on it, and he finally gave me a $10,000 raise and a $2,000 bonus,” Newcombe recalled. “Well, I had an off year in 1957 and Buzzie took my bonus back.”

Trivia answer: DiMaggio told him: “The Heinz 57 people had promised me a $10,000 deal if I got to 57.”

Quotebook: Senior golfer Jim Ferree: “Fifty percent of the fairways we play on today are better than 90% of the greens we played 30 years ago.”