Sportsviews OFF THE BENCH ... by Jerry Nardiello

While Sports Editor Jerry Nardiello is on vacation, this space will be turned over to guest columnists. Today's column is written by Stan Meisler, putting emphasis on sports in another world. Incidentally, this column has nothing to do with the former city reporter's relocation.

By STAN MEISLER

A Sports Fantasy

NEWSPAPERS GIVE THE False World of sports too much publicity!
The True World of athletic maneuverings never gets smeared with printer's ink.
America's fat-bellied boys, unable to add a set of three-column digits, sit in pool parlors with the batting, slugging and fielding averages of 160 muscled males firmly stuffed in their youthful beans. Also stuck there is a famous line of poetry:
"The game doth not run over until the last man is out." The newspapers tell the fat-bellied boys that.
‍While almost everyone dies for dear old State College, some survive to tell their grandchildren, who don’t read papers, about the home run Bobby Thomson hit in the last of the ninth to win a whole pennant for the New York Cinderellas.
Everyone who can or cannot read is convinced that Thomson or Merriwell or Armstrong, or Smilin' Jack is the all-American boy when, if the truth be told, the all-American fellow is not of them at all. The AA boy in the True World of sports is me, or, I suppose, I'm he. Newspapers, however, never write about me.

Lots Of All-Americans

I'M NOT THE ONLY all-American. There are lots more like me. For us the game is over in the last of the sixth.
Sometimes, however, things change in the ninth, but unlike the False World offered by the newspapers, it is the meanies rather than the good guys who do all the changing.
The history of the Longfellow Avenue Royals provides an apt example. Among its many features this squad listed me at first base and no victories in all games played up to the final one of the season.
We Royals were somewhat handicapped by our rightfielder, who preferred catching fly balls on a bounce to snagging them in the air. "It's easier that way," he explained, not adding, however, which way was "that way."
It was the final game of the season. We were scheduled to contest a rather powerful group of athletes. I don't remember their names but for obvious reasons shall dub them "The Ogres." The Ogres had won every game of the season up till then.

New Crop Of Heroes

STRANGELY, THE ROYALS, who had promised each other to give all for Longfellow Avenue - dear old Longfellow Avenue with its apartment buildings, rock-filled lot, candy store and Gach's grocery - were unafraid. In the first inning we scored three runs.
"Lob-'Em-In" Allen, our pitcher, was in unusual form. He walked very few. In the third inning, the Ogres pushed across a run. They got another in the sixth. The score was 3-2, our favor, going into the ninth. The Ogres had first licks. Three more outs, just three more and the Longfellow Avenue Royals would achieve a most astonishing victory in neighborhood history. If "Lob-'Em-In" could hold them, the Royals could achieve a Merriwell, an Armstrong, a Thomson, a Smilin’ Jack finish.
‍But it was not destined to be. The Ogres scored 19 times in the top of the ninth to beat the Royals 21-3. Somewhere in all the scoring a pop fly hit me on the head. But that didn't matter. Ten runs had already come across.
We ran to the bench after the Ogres had batted. "If they can do it," someone, schooled on newspapers, shouted. "The game doth not run over until the last man is out."
But, of course, it had, and, as I said, we lost, 21-3.
‍Baseball is not the only sport which often bathes in the False World. Football has its ugly side, and so does basketball. I have had varying experiences in those sports, too. That’s why I have set up the True World of sports.
That's where the all-American boy has more sores than scores - from sitting on the bench.‍