19th Hole: The Readers Take Over

WHITE GARTERS
Sirs:
William Leggett's article on the Chicago White Sox' "fatal" encounters with the Yankees and Orioles (The White Sox Hex that Failed, June 29) was the most depressing piece I have ever read in your magazine.
DAVID RUCE
Wayzata, Minn.

Sirs:
Even though the Chicago White Sox blew most of their recent games with the contenders from Baltimore and New York, they still are the best baseball team in both leagues.

The White Sox do not rely on great stars as the Yankees do; they rely upon teamwork, guts and hustle. As a result, they are among the leaders in fewest runs allowed, not to mention the overall standings.

The White Sox are going to come on strong again, and Manager Al Lopez will have his third American League pennant since 1954.
ALLEN DOOLITTLE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Sirs:
I have to agree with Manager Al Lopez. I think the Yankees have power, but look at the Orioles—they took three games in a row. The Yankees have pretty good pitching like Ford, Bouton and Hamilton. But in the beginning of the season all the teams the Yanks faced beat them. The Yankees are just plain lucky to win.
MICHAEL McCABE
New Britain, Conn.

TWO BELOW
Sirs:
Although your June 29 article, Settlers at the Bottom of the Sea, was a very welcome treatise on a much neglected subject, Author Coles Phinizy's comparison of Navy Captain George Bond and Frenchman Jacques-Yves Cousteau appears somewhat misleading. I do not wish to minimize Bond's work with gas mixtures and varying pressures or his original thinking in the realm of undersea habitation, but they hardly merit him a rating over Cousteau as the "first pathfinder" in man's conquest of the sea.

Cousteau helped to invent the Aqua-Lung, a design so efficient that it has remained virtually unchanged since its introduction in 1944. He pioneered work in underwater photography which was climaxed by the film, The Silent World (winner of the Cannes Film Festival, 1956), and cooperated with Dr. Harold Edgerton of MIT in research that gave us the cameras used to locate the Thresher last fall.

Cousteau's books, The Silent World (a bestseller for years in every major language) and The Living Sea, both have done more to attract public support of oceanographic endeavors than all of Bond's efforts.
JIM NAUGHTON
Cherry Hills, N.J.

TWO AFLOAT
Sirs:
As a landlocked layman, I was both fascinated and bewildered by Corny Shields's sailing lessons (The Tricks of Match Racing, June 29), but also impressed. Since there is always so much talk about the design of the competing boats at America's Cup time, I had always thought—up to now—that how you sailed them was relatively unimportant. I guess I was wrong.
JOHN BROWNING
Indianapolis

Sirs:
You say the boat on the blue path, which is ahead and to windward of the other, is in control. Nonsense. Who goofed: the great Corny Shields or just a careless editor?
SANDY PETERSON
Los Angeles