Records

In Berlin, one Herr Parlatus announced that he had talked continuously for 43 hours and would continue to do so until he had talked for 150 hours. Then he would be champion.

Harris Out

In 1919, a second baseman came from Buffalo to play with the Washington American League Club. In 1924, he managed the team which that year won the pennant and the World Series. Bucky Harris, the manager, became the greatest man in Washington. Coolidge was proud to shake his hand and Congressmen were lucky to get a look at him.

The next year, Washington won the pennant but lost the series to the Pittsburgh Pirates. In the season that is just now over Washington did less well. Last week, Clark Griffith, who owns the Washington team. announced that he had "fired" Bucky Harris, but would help him get a job with another team if another team offered him one. Reporters met Bucky Harris coming out of the ball park and asked him for an explanation. "Go up and see Griffith," said Harris. Said Griffith: "The best interests of the club. . . . We are still the best of friends. . . ."

Football

P: At Minnesota, a gigantic lineman named Bronko Nagurski outran his team mates in a race. Observing this, Dr. Spears, Minnesota's coach, summoned the rapid hulk and took him out of the line. Dr. Spears was looking for a successor to famed Herb Joesting who pushed his backfield bravely along last season. He regarded Bronko Nagurski as a potential fullback and, having noticed his celerity, he suggested, immediately, this position to the enormous player. So powerfully did Nagurski function in fullback capacity that a nickname ("The Big Nag") was found for him and he became the first of the autumn heroes. Due in some part to the momentum with which the Big Nag's heavy hindquarters propelled his shoulders through a Creighton line, Minnesota won its opening game, 40--0.

P: The Navy, properly subdued after the whacking which it received from Davis-Elkins, was unable to prevent Weston, a Boston College back, from making the one touchdown in a dreary game.

P: Lacking an Oosterbaan and a Friedman, Michigan lost its opening game of the season for the first time in 25 years, to Ohio Wesleyan, 17--7.

P: Lubradovitch and Bachus found it easy to deceive Bezi and Leppig, while the Wisconsin backfield performed sleight of hand behind them and beat Notre Dame, to the extensive surprise of all sports experts, by a score of 22 to 6.

P: The Army, faced with such sturdy Southern Methodists as Baccus, Roach and Watters, found it difficult to proceed, even by forced marches. Cagle, the West Point halfback, dodged through them several times. The final score was 14--13; the Methodists had missed one kick after touchdown.

P: Coach Roper of Princeton disappointed those who know most about Princeton teams in winning his first game by the largest score which Princeton has effected since the end of the War; 50--0, over Vermont.

P: Neither Yale nor Harvard allowed their first opponents to score upon them. No heel or seal-ring prints were seen upon the face of Guarnaccia, Harvard's halfback, after he and his fellows had scored 30 points against Springfield. Yale, though not easily, made 27 points against Maine.

P: Fordham, which will suffer no defeats this season, spanked George Washington, 20--0. The personnel of the Fordham eleven; Wiesniewiski, Foley, Cannella, Siano, Beloin, Hurley, Politis, Dallaire, Gripp, Cullen, Pieculewicz.

P: Other developments in a week of early season activity included a rumor that Princeton would disown the famed huddle-system which it began to use long before its puzzled rivals. Also the sixth and seventh casualties of the football season took place in hospitals. Leo Goodreau, 19, died of a broken neck in Philadelphia, calling the signals for the play in which he had been hurt. In Washington, Pa., William Charles Young had his back broken in a scratch game. In Orange, N. J., another casualty occurred. A man in a cinema theatre, watching a picture of Bruce Caldwell playing football, stood up, cheered, and dropped dead of heart failure.

Tobiano's Game

In their paddock at Meadow Brook, the ponies, most of them mares, were slim and beautiful. Their light hooves touched the ground with delicate impatience; they arched their necks and spoke to each other in a language whose only meaning was enthusiasm. Hearing the voices in the stands, smelling the turf and the excitement, they wished the game to begin.

So, before long, it did. The ponies, eight of them, loped out and poised for an instant at the field's centre. Then, as if swung off in the current of a centrifugal force, they scattered into dancing pairs, towards the field's edges, towards the goals. From time to time they returned to their paddock and other ponies took their places on the hoof-tracked turf. When the game was over, the ponies returned to their stables hungry and tired. After eating well they slept, flicking their ears at faint sounds in the pungent darkness.

Papers the next morning said "Argentine Beats U. S. in Second Polo Tilt Tying Series--Lacey Hero" or, after the third game, "U. S. Defeats Argentine in Final Game Clinching Championship of Americas--Harriman Star."

The ponies were forgotten; they did not care, they did not know. Polo ponies, like racehorses, are amateurs; they play the game well only because, in some way that is not clear, they love to play it.

The pony who most notably helped America beat the Argentine was Hitchcock's Tobiano. A litle piebald horse, striped in white on the haunches and short in the neck, as quick on the ball as a kitten, Tobiano arrived at his skill on the pampas of the Argentine, working with cowherds. Here Lewis Lacey chose the pony for his present master; the American captain played Tobiano for two periods in every game of the 1927 series against England.

For the Argentines, there was no star. All the Argentine mounts were superlatively swift, a little easier to handle than the U. S. ponies, though perhaps that was partly due to the way they were ridden. Argentine ponies, like Argentine players, get their training on cow-ranches; that makes them tougher, quicker to turn and readier to use their weight in riding off. They are not broken to polo until they are four or five years old; by this time they are stronger than ponies bred in England or on the playing fields of Westbury will ever be.

Though all polo ponies are wanderers for pleasure, the most recklessly cosmopolitan of all that played this year at Meadow Brook is Belle of Mexico, who belongs to Frederick Winston Churchill Guest. This chipper chestnut was discovered at a race track in Central America, up to no good things. A trainer purchased her for $75 and trained her for polo, at which she was adept even from the start. Later, the trainer sold her to the American No. 4 for $7,000.

Most used in the matches with the Argentine was Harriman's Lady Buck, who played eight periods. Next to Laddie Sanford, who was his nearest rival for place on the team, Averell Harriman has the best string of ponies in the U. S. The largest pony used in the series was Lacey's Jupiter, who is 15.2 hands high. The Argentines had younger ponies than the U.S., whose oldest mounts were perhaps twelve. In the U. S., J. C. Jacobs of San Antonio is the most successful breeder of polo ponies; in England, the members of the Balding family; in South America, Jack Nelson. Every breeder has his own notions as to the best polo pony diet. Most ponies eat oats, bran and water like racehorses. Some get clover; for others, it is alleged to be akin to poison.

World Series

Early in October, as surely as pumpkins grow yellow, the rolls of players of two professional baseball teams grow fatter. This year the teams were the New York Yankees of the American League and the St. Louis Cardinals of the National League. This clash was known as the World Series.

There had been some chatter in circles where subjects of chatter were scarce that the Yankees were in a crippled condition. In the first game, feeble Yankee Ruth was only able to hit two two-baggers and a single; dopey Yankee Hoyt allowed the robust Cardinals three hits. In the second game the Yankees, practically paralyzed, took for 15 hits the balls pitched by Cardinal Grover Cleveland Alexander the Great. In the third game, emaciated Yankee Gehrig clouted two home-runs. And in the fourth game, the Yankees victoriously completed eight straight World Series games (they had won four of these last year).*

*"You cannot beat the Yankees or Al Smith," was the slogan adopted last week by George Herman Ruth and eight fellow Yankees in announcing their support of Nominee Smith.