Scorecard

"I think football is a great game and more popular than in my time. Then it was mostly amateurs. Southern and Western teams weren't as good as they are today because the colleges were much smaller. Now there are colleges out there with enrollments of 30,000 and 40,000. In my time, the players came East. Hefflefinger and Shevlin came to Yale from Minnesota. Why, in 1908, when I was acting captain in my junior year. Harvard was the national champion.

"I think amateur football is very good today," Fish continues, "and, of course, professional football is attracting many people. Whether professional football will keep its standing, I doubt. Paying players hundreds of thousands of dollars becomes mercenary. The reason I am saying this is that although I am all for football, I'm inclined to believe that 25 years from now soccer football will be on a par with American football. And it will be for the better of the country! Because you can play it from seven to 40, maybe more. All you need is a pair of shoes and running shorts, and it's very good for exercising the legs. And in 50 years soccer football will be superior to American football, and then we will have the greatest championship teams in the world.

"This year in Orange County I decided to give a cup to the best high school soccer football team, and I think I may do the same for Dutchess County. I like to do this to show my interest in soccer football, but I have nothing against the other football."

PURE SCHMALTZ

Needling a horse at the racetrack is ordinarily a no-no, but Dr. Paul Schmaltz, a veterinarian who runs the Albuquerque Animal Acupuncture Clinic, has built a fine reputation and a tidy bankroll using the ancient Chinese art on quarter horses. According to the Chinese, a needle inserted at the proper point in the body can change the energy flow so the body can heal itself without drugs. Schmaltz says that a horse has more than 1,000 acupuncture points, and he has more than made his point with a couple of quarter horses this year. One of them is My Easy Credit, winner of the quarter-horse triple crown and more than $500,000 in purses.

Then there is Hot Idea, sold last year for only $4,000 because she was born with a crooked front leg. Hot Idea wore a cast for six months, and then, when she was ready to race, chipped a bone in her right front ankle. Schmaltz had the horse swim six days a week, and he also placed 11 needles 2�" deep in her right foreleg and shoulder. Connected to electrode wires, the needles sent a current of 150 volts into Hot Idea. She was fit after six weeks, and last September she won the world's richest horse race, the $1,030,000 All American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs, N. Mex.

"When you talk to people about acupuncture, they don't believe it, and I don't blame them," says Schmaltz. "But acupuncture is perfect for racehorses. I give a horse a general treatment the day before a race. By post time the horse is feeling supergood. Its ears are up, its eyes are open and you can hardly keep it on the ground."

HOLY MACKEREL!

About the last thing that 11-year-old Ralph Bravo remembers was that he was baiting his hook while standing in the stern of his dad's 15-foot boat off Key West last week. That's when a nine-pound king mackerel came flying out of the water, sailed through the air for 18 feet and hit Ralph smack in the ribs with its torpedo-like snout. The force of the blow knocked the boy into the water, while the fish fell into the boat—both of them out cold.

Dad leaped in and rescued Ralph, got him to shore and to the hospital. It turned out that the impact had ruptured the boy's spleen, which was removed in emergency surgery. The next day Ralph was sitting up in bed eating ice cream.