Jim Murray, May 25, 1961

May 25, 1961: Baseball fans may be a superstitious lot, but they’re nothing compared to the players and their mystic rites. Jim Murray says: “You can always tell a ball team on a winning streak. The locker room smells like a flophouse. Most ballplayers wouldn't think of changing an article of clothing while they're winning.”

Jim Murray, May 24, 1961

May 24, 1961: Donald George Bragg is depressed. In the first place, some young upstart had just broken his listed world record in the pole vault. In the second place, the upstart had done it using a fiberglass pole and it is the considered opinion of Donald George that this is like winning a craps game with dice you can't throw a seven with, or a card game with five natural aces.

Jim Murray, May 23, 1961

May 23, 1961: The Angels, who have a clear track to 10th place at the moment, are even ready for desperate measures. They are encouraging people to come out and root AGAINST them. I tested this idea for soundness with an old friend of mine from my magazine days, Chuck Champlin. He quickly switched his thoughts into gray flannel, pushed his horned-rimmed glasses up his nose and decided that what was needed was good old Madison Avenue know-how.

Jim Murray, May 22, 1961

May 22, 1961: A horse, left to his own devices, would no more run a race for his daily oats than you would wrestle the butcher two out of three for a pork chop. It's that pest on his back, the jockey, who louses up his otherwise peaceful day at the feedbag. But Bill Shoemaker, who rode his 4,000th winner the other afternoon, is an old smoothie with the horses who gets a good ride out of a mount the same way a cad coaxes a kiss out of a girl -- with soft words and smooth technique.

Jim Murray, May 21, 1961

May 21, 1961: Henry "Chip" Chafetz has put on the market a book titled "Play the Devil" -- a history of gambling in this country which sets out to prove that the urge to gamble has preserved the essential vitality of the American people and has made them willing not only to take chances on a Daily Double, but also on Alaska, the Far West, the New Frontier and anything else where the odds are as good as filling a straight, including a shot at the real moon.

Jim Murray, May 19, 1961

May 19, 1961: Jim Murray revisits the 1960 crash of a chartered plane carrying the Cal Poly football team, killing 22 people.  As always, he does a terrific job.

Jim Murray, May 17, 1961

May 17, 1961: John F. "Pep" Lemon, an old-time catcher, is superintendent of parks in the city of Fullerton and his job is trees and shrubs and lawns. But it's also kids. Pep never had a child of his own, but the den of his home is lined with pictures of kids in uniform -- most of them catchers' uniforms but some in military uniforms. Three of them --"best prospects you ever did see" -- were buried in those military uniforms, Billy Jones, Von Jones and Earl Stoner, before a big league scout ever got a look at them.

Jim Murray, May 16, 1961

May 16, 1961: A batter who has only to tell a real curve from a slider has an easy job compared to the general manager who has to straighten out the curve balls thrown at him by the other front offices. The Dodger's Buzzi Bavasi, for instance, has to hit the dirt from so many brush-back pitches thrown at him by his colleagues that he has the reputation of being a one-trade-a-year man, the front office equivalent of a Luke Appling who fouls off two-dozen pitches waiting for the right one.

Jim Murray, May 15, 1961

May 15, 1961: Norman G. Dyhrenfurth, an old friend and a perfect dynamo of human energy, is a man who not only thinks Mt. Everest is a place to be but a place for the American flag to be sometime in June 1963. He has just gained the hard-won permission of the Nepalese government to mount an expedition to Everest, the summit of the world, has fired off a check for 1,000 rupees ($640 in 1961 -- $4,611.85 USD 2010) to cinch his place in line and is now about to dervish around the country seeking the additional $150,000 ($1,080,901.75 USD 2010) it will take for an all-American team to bring not only Everest but also the surrounding ramparts of Lhotse and Nuptse to their knees.

Jim Murray, May 14, 1961

May 14, 1961: Rinold George Duren, is the victim -- or the beneficiary, if you want to look at it that way -- of the most monumental case of nearsightedness in the annals of sport, if not in the annals of optometry. The movies' Mr. Magoo, who frequently confuses the Sahara Desert with Malibu Beach or a lion with a housecat, is a hawkeye by comparison.

Jim Murray, May 12, 1961

May 12, 1961: Paul Pender is not really a prizefighter at all. He has retired from the game more times than Jackie Jensen. He is a fireman by trade and he still reaches out instinctively to slide down a pole when the alarm goes off early in the morning. He was just whiling away his days off dabbling in the prize ring when he suddenly found himself fighting for the championship of the world last year. Since his opponent was Sugar Ray Robinson, he didn't take his chances too seriously.

Jim Murray, May 11, 1961

May 11, 1961: The horse player is the hardest guy I know to please in the whole world of sports. He is grumpy, cynical, suspicious. He never smiles. No matter what happens he is not going to like it. If he wins, the price is too short. If he loses, it's somebody else's fault. The boy rode him like a camel. The starter got him stuck in the gate. The other horses came over on him just as he started to run.  Also on the jump: A golfing official says the PGA’s “Caucasian only” rule is doomed. State Atty. Gen. Stanley Mosk advised the national PGA that it could not stage its tournament in California unless the clause was eliminated.