The Frantic '40s

Sport, which Webster calls "a diversion of the field," was suffering from inflation.

As inflation will, it had sneaked up unbeknownst. All of a sudden, with a rule change here, a new technique there, games that used to be well-balanced and even-paced had become frantic high-scoring battles. Judging by attendance, and audience enthusiasm, the crowds liked it that way. But here & there a small voice could be heard--asking what had happened to football, hockey and basketball.

In the frantic '403, fences had been shortened to make the home run cheaper; and in a good many other games, the rules had been changed to accent the offense. In the '303 many a final basketball score was 34-30 or thereabouts. In Madison Square Garden fortnight ago, a college quintet, Ohio's Bowling Green, scored 97 points, the highest in the Garden's history. No less than four professional basketball teams had scored 100 or more points this season only to lose the game.

Fatter Scores. The New York Sun's enterprising sport editor looked up Ivy League football scores of 20 years ago, and matching them against 1948's, discovered that they had jumped 75%. Football's controversial free-substitution rule, allowing coaches to march armies of offensive & defensive specialists in & out at will, had put touchdown-making on a production line (TIME, Nov. 22). Everyone agreed that the rule favored teams with manpower, and took the game away from all-round stars. But there seemed to be little chance of a change in the rules.

The "power play," which has transformed big-time hockey into high-pressure shinny, is producing 24% more goals than in the age of the great Howie Morenz. In New Haven last week, a protest was heard. A test game, permitting only three offense players in the attacking zone at any time, was played before 25 New England prep-school coaches. Said Richard Cuyler, co-coach of South Kent School's hockey team and a leading opponent of power-play hockey: "The power play results in more rough play in the end zone, often resulting in organized shinny, indiscriminate shooting, banging at the puck, slashing . . . Much of the exciting open play of the older game has disappeared."

He seemed to be shouting against the wind. Hockey fans, paying as much as $3.75 a seat for pro games at Boston Garden, howled for two things: more action (meaning roughhousing) and more goals.

Longer Tee Shots. Because of "hypoed" golf balls, and steel shafts, today's top pros were unhappy with anything short of a 260-yard drive. When Bobby Jones was in his prime, 225 yards was considered a good tee shot.

But the most frenzied step-up of all has taken place in basketball. When Joe Lapchick played with the Celtics, the wonder pro team of the '205, scores were sometimes as low as 17-15. He remembers when "we played on slippery floors with basketballs black as charcoal from constant usage. As the season wore on, the ball would swell as seams loosened and baskets became harder to shoot."

In the 1930s, equipment improved and the game graduated from smalltime gyms to big-city arenas. The "10-second rule" was introduced, requiring the team putting the ball in play to be across the center line in that time; the old center jump was eliminated. Out of the Midwest and the far West came firehouse basketball and the fast break. The old distinction between forwards and guards was now all but forgotten. As coach of the New York (pro) Knickerbockers, Lapchick now spends most of his time setting up defenses to hold the opposition under 75 points, figuring that if he can hold them to so "low" a score he has a good chance to win.

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