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JUDGES STAND By Charles Hafton Introducing Our Editor Parker A Large Body Surrounded by Touts His Ivory Tower Is a Glass House NARC to Hear Graded Caps Shill ShillWe We seem to have a peculiar fascination for bores some ghastly allure that attracts them and inflames them to excesses As the most recent mam festation of this strange affliction that acidulous buffoon Dan Quixote Parker is ed ¬ iting our copy in his New York Daily Mirror column It has always been a moot point in newspaper circles which masterpiece came first Parkers or Chic Sales We should guess Parkers followed Sales as a natural consequence A fellow of rare gifts and at ¬ tainments our selfappointed editor For instance his nuisance value alone has been estimated at 7500000 by Herbert Bayard Swope It is said that when all the Gaul was divided Parker got the biggest share We do not mind this frustrated farmers droll efforts to be devastating Nobody takes him seriously any more unless it is Tropical Park But we could wish he were less apathetic toward the facts There is his implication we are on some race track payroll for example And the inane in ¬ ferences he placed on a recent paragraph in which we were jesting with Ben Jones and Granny Rice about the hypothetical Twilight TearPensive match Poisonous Parker outstripped even himself however the day he devoted a column to amusing his readers with cheap gibes at the expense of an aging turf writer whose only offense seemed to be that he was trying to earn a living We have never met Mr Parker but we venture to say that if he is no bigger in stature than in principle he can kiss a pig without stooping stoopingParker Parker says rather needlessly we think that he is a tyro on matters racing So are his sources of infor ¬ mation it is clear Experienced men do not write things like If Pensive wins the Belmont Warren Wright will become the first owner to capture the BelmontDerby double twice After that sally some of Parkers public confined their read ¬ ing to clinical thermometers until the throbbing subsided But if Parker realizes he is no turf expert he has a colossal conceit which impels him to kibitz those who are acquainted with the sport sportParker Parker and all his stooges of the sports i writing field may as well commence famil ¬ iarizing themselves with racing though it is their anathema else join a Trappist order and withdraw from the rest of the world Even now racing has infinitely more reader interest than has any other sport But perhaps Devastating Dan imagines the public is so eccentric he can get by indef ¬ initely feeding them a daily ration of his dreary diatribes The anvil chorus itself palls in time and it is set to music For sheer incongruity we doubt if there is anything in the entire history of sports journalism to compare with Parkers pre ¬ posterous upstage attitude toward what he chooses to call the trade sheets There he sits in his glass house completely sur ¬ rounded by tout ads and selections heav ¬ ing literary brickbats His is the only so called reputable newspaper accepting tout advertising It is a fantastic spectacle Parker likes to fancy himself a fearless champion of the downtrodden horse player Why does he not aim his paper lance at the touts and do something constructive instead of destructive for a change He need not go farther than his own department if he is looking for an expose But it would be naive to imagine he will go that far farA A news item from the Blue Grass says that Numerous subjects such as the modification of the claiming practices through more graded handicaps will be discussed in the NARC conference July 36 here at Chicago The substitution of graded handicaps for claiming races has proved farcical This movement represents a kind of strength through joy program in racing We shall look forward to this discussion in the hope somebody will present the publics case for once Graded handicaps are the most ideal me ¬ dium of form flipflops yet devised The California Breeders Foundation noting that scores of small breeders urg ently require facilities for breaking am training their young stock is castini about for suitable training tracks both in the southern and northern parts of th state Meanwhile the Ventura Fair Grounds has been made available Several hundred equine native sons will be broken this year
