August 25, 1995|By JOHN STEADMAN
Pull up a chair, but it is best that all readers be forewarned. The greatest sports book ever written -- called "No Cheering In The Press Box" -- will keep you awake until dawn's early light. It's like tapping into a time capsule, or finding a gold mine of laughter and lore as 24 of America's premier sportswriters, from decades ago, tell some of the stories they never dared tell before.
The anthology was conceived by Jerome Holtzman of the Chicago Tribune, one of the country's finest sportswriters who is held in the highest of personal and professional esteem by his contemporaries. Holtzman has done something like this before, but his latest production is a revised and enlarged edition of what he published in 1973.
Only two of the 24 men in the book, Shirley Povich of the Washington Post and Fred Russell of the Nashville Banner, are still living. But all their words, which Holtzman recorded and transcribed verbatim, have survived -- providing an authentic insight to what was going on behind the scenes at a time when sports weren't as sophisticated as they are today.
Such prominent bylines as Red Smith, John Kiernan, Paul Gallico, Al Laney, John R. Tunis and Jimmy Cannon are included in the lineup and so are those of less renowned but nonetheless qualified writers. What makes the Holtzman work a joy to behold is the sportswriters are telling stories, naming names and describing situations that made the sports world of yesteryear such a colorful place to be.
It's a revealing, entertaining experience to turn the pages of this exciting book, published by Henry Holt and Co., and re-live the bygone eras when some sportswriters lived, drank and caroused with the athletes they were writing about.
Once involved in the text, it's easy to feel pained and frustrated over why sports has lost so much of its earlier flamboyant personality and to realize that the sportswriters then enjoyed a special rapport that brought them close to the players.
A sportswriter named Abe Kemp of the San Francisco Examiner tells why Lefty Gomez didn't go to the Cleveland Indians. A deal had been made with the San Francisco Seals to buy Gomez for $50,000 and three players, but the scout -- one Cy Slapnicka -- after seeing the pitcher undressed in the locker room, called off the transaction. We'll have to leave it to your imagination -- but the book doesn't -- on why Gomez was passed over and later went to the New York Yankees and the Hall of Fame.
Then Al Abrams, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, checks in with a recollection of one of baseball's most notorious drinkers, Paul Waner, a Hall of Famer who was the sixth player in history to collect 3,000 hits.
"One night in New York, a Saturday during Prohibition, Paul and I went out together," recounts Abrams. "You couldn't stop Paul from getting two or three bottles of whiskey. He had a couple of Follies girls with him. As the night wore on, I got worried. I knew I'd have to pull him together. We got back to the hotel at 5 in the morning.
"The Pirates had a Sunday doubleheader. Paul got a home run, two doubles and a single in the first game and a home run, a triple and a single in the second game: 7-for-9. Now how can you fault a guy like that for his drinking?"
Abrams points out that Pittsburgh, where he enjoyed immense popularity, was such a hub of boxing action that five of the eight world champions in the early 1940s were from the city, naming Billy Conn, light heavyweight; Billy Soose, middleweight; Fritzie Zivic, welterweight; Sammy Angott, lightweight; and Jackie Wilson, featherweight.
Another boxing tale comes from Jim Schlemmer of the Akron Beacon-Journal, who was referred to as the H. L. Mencken of the sports page. Schlemmer once spelled heavyweight Jack McAuliffe's name as Jack McAwful, after he fought a dismal bout with Kayo Christmer. Years later, McAuliffe came to Akron with ++ Primo Carnera as a sparring partner, but was looking for %J Schlemmer to settle the account.
Not knowing Schlemmer, the fighter asked him if he knew a newspaperman by that name. "There's a guy on the Beacon-Journal with a name like that," Schlemmer replied. Still McAuliffe/McAwful had no idea he was talking to Schlemmer at that precise moment.
"That no-good SOB. I made this trip here especially to see him. If I get my hands on him, I'll kill this guy," promised McAuliffe/McAwful. Then Schlemmer, sarcastic as usual, remarked, "You'll have to get in line. There's a lot of people ahead of you."
After accompanying the boxer to a restaurant, Schlemmer opened the door, told him to go in and take a seat. He next explained he then took off running under a bridge and through the locks of the Ohio Canal.
Fred Lieb, who broke in as a writer in 1911, in the same New York rookie class with Grantland Rice, Damon Ruyon and Heywood Broun, said that Ty Cobb, at a hunting lodge near Brunswick, Ga., once kicked a dog and shouted, "That's a hunting dog, not a pet dog. He knows better than this, to come up on the porch."
Cobb was a mean, cruel man, said Lieb. He quotes Babe Ruth as saying, "Cobb was a great ballplayer but a no-good, mean SOB." Then Lieb reports, "Ninety percent of the players felt the same way. Cobb was very much hated. Players hated his guts."
In putting together the book, Holtzman interviewed 44 sportswriters and used 24 of them because of space limitations. He has, without a doubt, re-created a classic.
"The only men considered were of the two generations prior to mine," he writes in the introduction. "None of the interviewees was given the opportunity to edit or alter his remarks."
