Summer Time Sports

Here is a complete, handy, 100 percent un authoritative guide to hot weather sports.

Our guide is primarily concerned with recreational or play-it-yourself-type sports. The International Boxing Club, the major league baseball owners, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and other sports promoters have been so spectacularly successful in driving the public away from their events that recreation has become a billion dollar industry. No one can deny the tremendous influence that sports have on the American scene. The talent of sports promoters for keeping the public at home, for example, must share credit with mediocre movies and long television commercials for the dazzling birth rate in this country. But we digress.

Here, then, is a list of tried-and-true, hot weather pastimes, with hints on how to keep cool, save money, conserve energy, improve your mind, strengthen your biceps, and in 99 cases out of 100, if our advice is followed to the letter, broaden your beam.

Golfing: When the urge comes upon you to play golf, you can do any of several things. One -- you can play golf. This is the hard way out. You risk sunstroke, you kill most of a day, your wife and/or girl friend gets mad at you for leaving her at home and you get mad at yourself for the score.

If it's the exercise you crave, why not jog around the block, then ride out to the driving range and shoot a bucket of balls. Time -- half-an-hour; money -- six bits. If it's the 19th hole that appeals to you, why not try the corner bar: competition -- the pinball machine. The alert, aggressive sportsman can find many splendid ways of getting around playing golf.

Ping pong: This is no joke -- ping pong is a very strenuous sport. Its great dvantage is that you can usually set it up in your basement, the basement is cool in summer, and unless you're an awful chump, it's one sport you can beat your girl friend at.

Softball: This sport is generally thought of as primarily for youngsters, but it is ideal for old gaffers in their thirties and forties who are trying to maintain the illusion they aren't as old as their big pots say they are. Blubber isn't much of a handicap in softball, and if you can avoid heart attacks, jammed fingers, and breaking your leg sliding home, here is the sport for the young old man.

Croquet: Passé.

Swimming: The King of Summer sports! Cooling! Relaxing! Healthful! Everyone lives within hiking distance of some kind of old' swimming' hole.

If you live near a river, what is more invigorating than diving into the good old stream, picking your way through beer cans, orange peels, garbage and assorted rubber goods dispatched your way by the sports in the town upstream? Or if you're on one of the mighty Great Lakes, diving into that brisk, stimulating 30 degree water? Or if you're lucky enough to have access to a pool, joining 2,000 juvenile delinquents as they scratch, push, scream, and splash through the foot solution and out into the chlorine? Of course, maybe you've got one of those nice houses with a sandy beach on a crystal clear lake, or a nice private pool in the back. If you've got one of those nice houses, we still have several weekends open on our summer social' calendar.

Fishing: People who fish have a very difficult time figuring out why people who don't fish don't fish. They don't waste much time worrying about (continued on page 44) Summertime Sports (continued from page 17) it, but it does baffle them on occasions. Here is a story. When this sportsman was younger and dumber, he was asked to accompany some other sportsmen on a fishing trip to a lake in upper Michigan, which we assume was called Round Lake, because every lake in Michigan is called either Round Lake or Long Lake. We got to Round Lake, and began our three-day tour of duty, which consisted of manning a pair of oars and rowing around Round Lake while these clowns stuck their lines in the water in search of a muskellunge which left the vicinity along with the glaciers. Late in the second day, to give the blisters a chance to drain, we were allowed to cast a line of our own into the water, and we came up with a bass that snapped at us. That was the beginning and end of one sportsman's fishing career. Even golf is better than that.

Polo: If you have enough money to play polo, you should have more sense than to play it. People get hurt doing that.

Horse racing: We refer to the attendance at tracks, and the investment of money in pari-mutuel machines -- one of the most invigorating and expensive sporting pastimes in the country. Out in New Mexico a man once put up a sign over his slot machines: "These machines pay 40 per cent." He did it for a gag, and set the machines to pay only 40 percent, and he got the biggest play he'd ever had.

At the race tracks the public has discovered machines in which you can put a dollar and 80 or 85 or 89 cents come out, depending on how much the state takes and how much the state lets the track take. Sportsmen find these machines irresistible, and drive many miles, and spend many hours devising ways of making more than 80 or 85 or 89 cents come out for every dollar put in. It sometimes takes a lot of dollars to convince a man that the machines win every race. Sometimes they tease you a little with some bills, and sometimes they give you an awful kick in the rear, but always they end up extracting 15 or 20 cents out of every dollar. But it's a healthy pastime -- it keeps the sports out in the open air, and it gets their blood circulating as they watch their investment in the seventh race plodding around the back turn -- blissfully contemplating the horsey pleasures of the stud farm or perhaps tenderly recalling the fun of the old ice route.

Outboard motoring: We were driven out of the resort area in the thirties by outboard motors, and now are about to be driven out of the city by their noisy urban counterpart, motor lawn mowers. We've heard that some genius has found a way of quieting outboard motoring, however, and also of starting the things without using a starting cord and lashing your passengers across the face. If these rumors are true, here is one of the most noble of summer sports. Just sit and steer and let the wind and spray blow through your hair, as you whip around all the fishermen and scare away all the fish.

Tennis: If anyone could invent a way to learn this game without spending 95 percent of your time chasing the damn ball it would attract more customers. There should also be a way to learn in privacy, just as in golf you should be allowed to drive off the first tee with no witnesses.

Tennis is a good mixed game, like ping pong, but don't ever get on the court with a woman you aren't absolutely sure you can beat. It just isn't good for the self-respect.

Racing sports cars: This is a growing sport, but don't be fooled just because it's something you do sitting down. A man who races these things was reciting to us the other day the wonderful safety factors of the sport: "Everybody's going in the same direction, on good pavement, in broad daylight, with good brakes, perfect equipment, and good drivers. What could be safer?" Offhand, we could name three or four hundred pastimes that could be safer -- and three or four hundred more than that, if you pressed us. Two weeks after our conversation, this fellow was sitting in a racing car going 90 miles per hour. The driver took a turn too fast, lost control, and the car rolled over three times, throwing our safety expert fifteen feet in the air. He landed in some grass, got up, brushed off, and looked across to see where we were sitting, as if to say, "See?!"

Canoeing: This is a pretty good sport -- cooling, co-educational, gets you out in the open, and you can pursue it sitting down.

Horseshoe pitching: Even better -- a little walking and arm swinging involved, but primarily a mild pastime, to be pursued in a shady dell, at a leisurely pace, with plenty of time for refueling.

Hammock duty: Now we're talking summer sports!