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g" ,,iv:. SPORTS CLOSE-UPS By Ira Seebacherl NEW YORK, May 1.— Maurice Podoloff has been and is the president of the National Basketball Association and will be for the next three years, having been reelected by the Board of Governors. This must come as discour-aging news to the president of Madison Square Garden, Ned Irish, who has crossed swords with Podoliff and come off second best so many times that Maurice probably occupies the No. 1 position on Neds list of enimies. Yet, to look at Podoloff, youd never suspect he had the disposition or the iron to tell off the man who almost, but not quite, runs the NBA. In fact, we suspect that Podoloff s ability to crush Irish when need be has earned him permanent possession of the job. Yet in a way, whatever it is that profes-s i o n a 1 basketball has attained in this country and whatever it is that the game aspires to attain is due to the efforts of these two men. Thered be no professional basketball as we know it today if it hadnt been for Irish. It was Irish who took the cage game out of the sweaty, arnica-smelling bandboxes and school gyms and brought it up to the bigtime. It was Podoloff who took the helm of the newly-born pro league and guided this frail craft through many a choppy sea. The pros gained the importance and stature when the college game was all but wrecked by a succession of scandals. AAA Through vigilance and a tremendous amount of anticipation, the same connivers failed to ruin the pros. They prospered and they have grown. Not to the adult stage wed like to see but they have come a long way and we surmise theyll go farther for there is a definite place for fine basketball in our entertainment scheme of things. There are still many things wrong with the ! NBA that niggardiness and lack of capital I make necessary but it must be said that the league has not stood still. It is moving and the direction is forward and the man responsible for the progress is this same roly-poly, slick-talking Podoloff who is one of the few presidents of a league we ever heard of who insisted on presiding. Hes no figurehead. If he were, hed be a friend of Ned Irish. AAA So the game benefits by his presence and were glad to se hell be running things for three more years. We hope that Mr. Podoloff is going to be flexible enough to see that the future of the game is dependent upon giving a major league franchise to more cities than now have one. There has been a block to this in the past by the NBA owners who feel that the inclusion of new clubs would bring about the eventual formation of a rival league, but they do not see that two major leagues would be as much help to basketball as two leagues proved fruitful to baseball. There is no reason why cities such as San Francisco. Los Angeles, Houston, etc., shouldnt have a team in major league circles. Podoloff is for temporizing. Realizing that these new franchises must come or else move over to another league, he talks of bringing a few into the fold over a three-year period. Thats the wrong way, we feel. Bring em in now, and split the field into two leagues. Everyone will benefit. AAA We have to laugh, how that visiting clubs I have found a new bone to pick with the Yankees. Seems the visiting bullpen has a layout just the opposite to that which prevails on the field and in the Yankee bullpen. In the visiting pen, the pitcher stands with his back to the field and pitches away from the direction of home plate. He also has to pitch slightly uphill whereas the I condition on the field is that the pitcher stands on a slight mound and pitches slightly downhill to his receiver. While it is technically true that there may be some-disadvantage to this, it seems rather ridiculous to bring it up at this late point. The Yankees however, are taking the complaint seriously and are willing to swing things ■round so that the visiting pitcher can also DC throwing in the correct compass direction and in a slightly downhill setup. We rather suspect this may have been the com-pkant of Frank Lane, long needier of the Yankees. Unfortunately, needling the Yankees is no way to beat them. This is done by outplaying them. Cry-baby tactics such as this, while they may prove efficent in their annoyance ratio, are not best designed to wring admiration from the fans. They want to see a team win or lose on the strength of more commendable qualities than the ability to heckle and carp. We find it a rather picayune complaint, who- j ever was responsible for making it. The Yankees are right in honoring its validity and prove themselves a lot bigger by making this silly concession than by refusing. It isnt really an advantage, but it would sound like one if it were not changed. Of course, this hasnt been any great parade of Yankee strength to date and the ability to play the gad-fly is a lot easier when you are bedeviling people who are already exasperated by their own inability to get going. Theres scarcely a day that goes by that Stengel doesnt publicly knout some phase of his teams operation in the hope of goading the team of better things. He deplores the hitting slump, he rumbles about the number of hits going through the left side of his infield, he threatens to juggle to shift, to change, to experiment. He spouts and fumes and tries every trick in the books to get his heroes on the winning track. Sometimes, these tricks can work. They work more often or not when tried by an expert. When they fail, it isnt because every resource hasnt been tried. It reminds one of the loving care with which the late Humphrey Bogart kicked the boiler of the African Queen yet when it needed he could disassemble and put it together with the loving care and knowledge of the true expert. Stengels "African Queen" is perhaps in a run-down state, perhaps it isnt. But whether it needs just a kick at the right time, a disassembling and rebuilding job or whether, thats the boy who knows how and when to do it. If he fails, it wont be because he has failed to try every resource. And backing him -to the hilt is another man equally resourceful, George Weiss. If, between them, the Yankees should flp this year, it wont be for lack of trying by these two, who get every ounce of horsepower out of the machine available. Theyre experts at the knout, the rack, the coffin bath and whatever else thats needed to persuade a club onward. Not everyone of all those pennants came from just being able to rock a rocking chair.
