I'd Die For Dear Old Rutgers

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Title:     I'd Die For Dear Old Rutgers
Author: Heywood Broun [More Titles by Broun]

"He fought the last twenty rounds with a broken hand." "The final quarter was played on sheer nerve, for an examination at the end of the game showed that his backbone was shattered and both legs smashed." "Although knocked senseless in the opening chukker, he finished the match and no one realized his predicament until he confessed to his team mates in the clubhouse."

These are, of course, incidents common enough in the life of any of our sporting heroes. To a true American sportsman a set of tennis is held in about the same esteem as a popular playwright holds a woman's honor. There is no point at which "I give up" can be sanctioned. Not only must the amateur athlete sell his life dearly, but he must keep on selling it until he is carried off the field. Accordingly, it is easy to understand why Forest Hills seethed with indignation when Mlle. Suzanne Lenglen walked (she could still walk, mind you) over to an official in the middle of a tennis match and announced that she was ill and would not continue. It was quite obvious to all that the Frenchwoman was still alive and breathing and the thing was shocking heresy.

The writer is not disposed to defend Suzanne's heresy to the full. He believes that Mlle. Lenglen was ill, but he feels that she erred, not because she resigned, but because she did it with so little grace. She seemed to have no appreciation of the hardship which the sudden termination of the match imposed upon Mrs. Molla Bjurstedt Mallory. However, Molla did and came off the court swearing.

It was an embarrassing moment, but possibly a moral can be dug from it all the same. For the first time in the experience of many, a new sort of athletic tradition was vividly presented. No one will deny that the French knew the gesture of Thermopylæ as well as the next one, but they have never thought to associate it with sports. The gorgeous and gallant Carpentier has, upon occasions in his ring career, resigned. He showed no lack of nerve on these occasions, but merely followed a line of conduct which is foreign to us. Pitted at those particular times against men who were too heavy for him and facing certain defeat, he admitted their superiority somewhat before the inevitable end. Like a chess master, he sensed the fact that victory was no longer in the balance, and that nothing remained to be done except some mopping up. Such perfunctory and merely academic action did not seem to him to come properly within the realm of sport, particularly if he was to be the man mopped up.

American sport commentators who knew these facts in the record of Carpentier were disposed to announce before his match with Dempsey that he would most certainly seek to avoid a knockout by stopping as soon as he was hurt. His astounding courage surprised them. And yet it was exactly the sort of courage they should have expected. He did not fight on through gruelling punishment just for the sake of being a martyr. He went through it because up to the very end he believed that his great right hand punch might win for him, and even at the last Carpentier was still swinging.

In spite of the sentimental objections of the old-fashioned follower of sports, the tradition which was bred out of Sparta by Anglo-Saxon has begun to decay. Referees do step in and end unequal contests. Ring followers themselves are known to cry, "Stop the fight" at times when the match has become no longer a contest. "Mollycoddles!" shriek the ghosts of the bareknuckle days who float over the ring, but we do not heed their voices. Again, we have decreasing patience with the severely injured football player who struggles against the restraining arms of the coaches when they would take him out because of his disabilities. To-day he is less a hero than a rather dramatically self-conscious young man who puts a gesture above the success of his team.

There is still ground for the modification of a sporting tradition which has made those things which we call games become at moments ordeals having no relation to sport. Losing is still considered such a serious business that an elaborate ritual has been built up as to what constitutes good losing. We not only demand that a man shall die, if need be, for the Lawn Tennis Championship of Eastern Rhode Island, but we go so far as to prescribe the exact manner in which he shall die. A set, silent and determined demeanor is generally favored.

From Japan have come hints of something better in this direction. Every American engaged in sport should be required to spend an afternoon in watching Zenzo Shimidzu of the Japanese Davis Cup team. Shimidzu's contribution to sport is the revelation that a man may try hard and yet have lots of fun even when things go against him. He seems to reserve his most winning smile for his losing shots. Once in his match against Bill Johnston he was within a point of set and down from the sky a high short lob was descending. Shimidzu was ready for what seemed a certain kill. He was as eager as an avenging sparrow. Back came his racquet and down it swung upon the ball, only to drive it a foot out of court. Immediately, the little man burst into a silent gale of merriment. The fact that he had a set within his grasp and had thrown it away seemed to him almost the funniest thing which had ever happened to him.

Of course, this is a manner which might be difficult for us Americans to acquire. Unlike the Japanese we have only a limited sense of humor. Its limits end for the most part with things which happen to other people. We laugh at the pictures in which we see Happy Hooligan being kicked by the mule, but we would not be able to laugh if we ourselves met the same mule under similar circumstances. However, in an effort to popularize the light and easy demeanor in sporting competition it is fair to point out that it is not only a beautiful thing but that it is also effective.

Shimidzu almost beat Tilden by the very fact that he refused to do anything but smile when things went against him. The tall American would smash a ball to a far corner of the court for what seemed a certain kill, but the little man would leap across the turf and send it back. And as he stroked the ball he smiled. It was discouraging enough for Tilden to be pitted against a Gibraltar, but it seemed still more hopeless from the fact that even when he managed to split the rock it broke only into the broadest of grins.

Ten years of work by one of our most prominent editors for a war with Japan were swept away by the Davis Cup matches. It is hard to understand how there can be any race problem concerning a people with so excellent a backhand and so genial a disposition. Indeed, many of the things which our friends from California have told us about Japan did not seem to be so. All of us have heard endlessly about the rapidity with which the Japanese increase. There was no proof of it at Forest Hills. When the doubles match started there were on one side of the net two Japanese. When the match ended, almost four hours later, there was still just two Japanese.

[The end]
Heywood Broun's essay: I'd Die For Dear Old Rutgers

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