Dispatches from the Sporting Life (7 page)

As for
Time,
if it is not anti-Semitic, then it is certainly Machiavellian; otherwise, why second-best Juan Marichal on a cover last summer when Koufax was also available? Either as a back of the hand to Jewish achievement or as a shameful, possibly Jewish-motivated, attempt to apply the famous
Time
cover jinx to the one Gentile who might have won more games than Koufax.

Messrs. Ducovny and Wakefield are another matter. They think I would joke about Jews in sport, which strikes me as presumptuous.

Mr. Ducovny cunningly introduces Willie Davis’s three errors behind Koufax in one inning and immediately claims this was a case of Negro anti-Semitism. Not necessarily. It depends on whether Davis dropped the three fly balls in his character as a Negro or in his office as an outfielder. Me, I’m keeping an open mind on the incident.

On the other hand, Mr. Wakefield is right when he says there is much more research to be done about Jews in sport. Not only Jews, but other minority and out-groups. Allan Roth,
pace
Jerome
Holtzman, may border on genius in his field, but though it may seem to some fans that baseball is already stifled with statistics, these are only statistics of a certain kind, safe statistics. It has been left to me to establish, haphazardly I admit, the absorbing statistic that homosexuals in both major leagues prefer playing third base over all other positions. As a group, they hit better in night games and are more adroit at trapping line drives than catching flies. They do not, as the prejudiced would have it, tend to be showboats. They are a group with a gripe. A valid gripe. Treated as equals on the field, cheered on by teammates when they hit a homer, they tend to be shunned in the showers. On road trips, they have trouble finding roomies.

Finally, since I wrote my article, so unexpectedly controversial, world events have overtaken journalism.

I’m not saying that Ronald Reagan, who in the unhappy past has been obliged to play second-best man again and again for Jewish producers, has been harbouring resentments … or is behind the incomparable Koufax’s departure from California. I’m not saying that image-conscious Governor Reagan, mindful of right-wing support, was against being
photographed shaking hands with Captain Maury Wills on opening day. I’m also not saying that after Willie Davis dropped the three flies, Mr. O’Malley turned to one of his minions and said, “Davis belongs with the Mets.” Furthermore, I’m not saying that the aforementioned front-office minion could not tell one Davis from another…. Just remember, as they said in the sports pages of my boyhood, that you read it here first.

1966

“Y
ou’ll find this is a good story for you,” he said. “A real Canadian success story.”

The party at the other end of the line was Ben Weider, president of the International Federation of Body Builders, who was sponsoring the Official Combination Contests to Select Mr. America and Mr. Universe at the Monument National Theatre, in Montreal, in 1960. The competition, according to advance publicity, was going to be the “Greatest Physical Culture Contest ever organized anyplace in the World!”

“I’ve been to eighty-four countries in the last six years,” Weider told me, “including Red China. But I’m not a communist, you know.”

Weider was a man of many offices. He was, with his brother Joe, the Trainer of Champions, with outlets in cities as far-flung as Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Vienna. He was president and director of Weider Food Supplements (makers of Super Protein 90 and
Energex) and the Weider Barbell Company, and managing editor of
Mr. America
and
Muscle Builder,
among other magazines. He was the author of such books as
MANGEZ BIEN
et restez svelte and
JEUNE
toute sa vie. In one of his many inspirational articles, “The Man Who Began Again,” he wrote, “True sportsmen always cheer for the underdog … for the guy who has come up from down under—the hard way,” and that’s certainly how Ben Weider had risen to eminence as manufacturer, publisher, author, editor, world traveller, and number-one purveyor of muscle-building equipment and correspondence courses in North America.

Weider was only thirty-six years old. His brother Joe, who ran the American end of their various enterprises out of Union City, New Jersey, was thirty-nine. They had both been brought up in Montreal’s St. Urbain Street area during the thirties. Skinny, underdeveloped boys, they first took to body development as a form of self-improvement. Then, in 1939, they began to write and publish a mimeographed magazine that would tell others how they could become he-men. To begin with, the magazine had a circulation of five hundred copies. Enthusiasts started to write in to ask where they could get the necessary equipment to train themselves. And so, from their modest offices on Colonial Street, the Weiders began to supply the desired equipment and correspondence courses until, Ben Weider said, they became the acknowledged leaders in the field.
Muscle Builder
and
Mr. America,
no longer mimeographed, now appeared monthly in ten languages with, Weider claimed, a total circulation of a million copies.

In May 1960, Ben Weider moved into his own
building on Bates Road, from which he overlooked his widespread empire in the comfort of a most luxurious office. For inspiration, perhaps, there hung behind Weider’s desk a painting of a resolute Napoleon, sword drawn, mounted atop a bucking stallion. It was here, amid trophies, diplomas, and the odd bottle of Quick-Wate (Say Goodbye to Skinny Weakness), that we had our first chat.

“Why don’t you send me a chapter from your next novel,” Weider offered, “and we could shove it into
Muscle Builder
or
Mr. America.
It ought to win you a lot of new readers.”

Yes, possibly. But, alas, I had to let on, I had never been considered
A BIG HITTER
by the muscle-building set.

Weider looked at me severely.

Later, once I had read some of his correspondence courses, I realized that he had probably spotted my inferiority complex. I was not thinking
BIG,
positive
thoughts.
“DON’T BE ENVIOUS OF SOMEONE ELSE’S SUCCESS,”
brother Joe advised people who felt inferior.
“MAYBE SOMEONE ELSE ENVIES YOU!
They are bald…
you have a head full of hair.
They are fat…
you are building a he-man body.”

Weider was a soft-spoken, courteous, ever-smiling man
(“YOUR TEETH,”
Joe wrote,
“ARE THE JEWELS OF YOUR FACE”)
with a high-pitched voice. A conservative dresser, he had surely grasped, just as Joe advised in
BE POPULAR, SELF-CONFIDENT, AND A HE-MAN,
that it was necessary to
MAKE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION A GOOD ONE!
Why? Because, as Joe said,
your packaging is your appearance.
Another thing was that Ben had chosen his hairstyle wisely.
It fitted his face!
He was not the
sort of birdbrain Joe complained about who wore his hair in, say, a Flat-Top Crew Cut, just because “it’s what everybody else is wearing now.”

Weider, married in 1959, had recently become a father. His boy, he told me, weighed ten pounds eleven ounces at birth.
He was also twenty-three inches long!

“CONGRATULATIONS!!!”
I said, grasping his hand
firmly.
And, even as we parted, I made a note to remember his name, for… “people like to be called by name…. You can make yourself a real
somebody
by being known as the
one
man who never forgets names.”

At home, I had time to read only one of Weider’s correspondence lessons before going to bed. My choice was
Secrets of a Healthy Sex Life.

Choosing the right girl, brother Joe wrote, was vitally important.
“Is she sports-minded?”
he asks. “Would she frown on you having your own home gym?
DOES SHE LIKE WORKING OUT WITH YOU?”

Weider also suggested that young couples should pray together, use a good deodorant and positive thinking, and keep their weight
normalized.
He offered sensible advice to young husbands. “Wear clean pyjamas each night…and be sure that you have a variety of patterns in pyjamas. You would not expect her to retire in a torn nightgown with cold cream daubed over her face … hence you should make yourself as attractive as she.”

All in all,
Secrets
gave me plenty of food for thought. It seemed a good idea to absorb its message before plunging into other, more advanced lessons, like
How to Get the Most Out of People,
although this
particular pamphlet looked most intriguing. The illustration on the cover showed an assured, smiling young man grasping piles of dollar bills, coins, and money bags. I was keen to learn from him how to use people, but one
BIG,
positive
thought was enough for one day. So, putting the lessons aside, I turned to
Muscle Builder.
There I read that Chuck Sipes, a recent Mr. America champion, had built his
TERRIFIC
muscles by using the Weider Concentration Principle.

A couple of days later I met Sipes at the Mount Royal Studio, where he had come to train for the approaching contest.

“Been in weightlifting a long time?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Like it?”

“Yeah.”

“Enjoying your stay in Montreal?”

“Yeah.”

Sipes managed a gym in Sacramento, California. He told me that when he started lifting weights eight years ago he had been just another puny guy of some 165 pounds, but now he weighed in at 204. I wished him luck in the contest and went on to chat with Mr. Ireland, Mr. Bombay, and Mr. Hercules of India, all fine fellows. But the man who made the greatest impression on me was Mr. Scotland Sr., otherwise known as R. G. Smith, of the electricity board in Edinburgh. Smith, who was to become my friend, had come to Montreal both to visit his children and to enter the contest—not that he had the slightest chance of winning. Smith was fifty-four years old. He had begun to practice body building at forty-seven.

The body builders’ exhibition was held on Eaton’s
fourth floor on the Friday night before the contest. There was a good turnout. Some three to four hundred people, I’d say. An associate of Weider’s introduced me to Dr. Frederick Tilney, who had flown in from Florida to be one of the contest judges. “Dr. Tilney,” the man said, “has seven degrees.”

The doctor, a sturdily built man in his mid-sixties, looked surprisingly young for his years.

“Can you tell me,” I asked, “at what colleges you got your degrees?”

“What’s the difference what college? A college is a college. Some college graduates end up digging ditches. It’s what you make of yourself that counts in this world.”

“What exactly do you do, Doctor?”

“Oh, I lecture on health and success and that sort of stuff.”

Suddenly Ben Weider was upon us. “Sorry to interrupt your interview,” he said, “but the show must go on.”

A young French-Canadian body builder mounted the platform to introduce Dr. Tilney. “The doctor,” he said, “has travelled all over the world and is one of the most famous editors and writers in it.”

“Well, then,” Dr. Tilney said, “I’m sure all you washed-out, weak, worn-out, suffering, sickly men want to renew your youth and delay that trip to the underground bungalow.”

A body builder came out and struck a classic pose.

Dr. Tilney beamed at us. “We have assembled here some of the finest examples of manhood in the world. We are building a new race of muscular
marvels, greater than the Greek gods. We’re doing it scientifically.”

Mr. Ireland assumed a heroic pose.

“You too,” Dr. Tilney told us, “can develop a physique like Bill Cook’s and overcome constipation, hernia, hardening of the arteries, diarrhea, heart disease, tuberculosis, rheumatism, and so forth.”

We were introduced to Ed Theriault and his eight-year-old son, who demonstrated the Weider Chest Expander.

“This man here,” the doctor said, “is the strongest short man in the world. He can do it—so can you! And look at this boy here. Isn’t he sensational? Body building is one of the finest means of overcoming delinquency. If the kid’s in the gym he’s not in the poolroom. Why, I’m sure none of you want your boy to grow up a skinny runt—puny! You want him to be a real Weider he-man!”

Some other men came out to demonstrate weight lifting.

“And just look at the fine equipment, Weider equipment,” the doctor said. “Guaranteed to last a lifetime. No parts to break. Isn’t it something? And I have news for you. Eaton’s is going to make this beautiful equipment available to you on their wonderful convenient time-payment plan. Isn’t that something?”

Ben Weider applauded.