Current Week & What's Ahead

Sportsman of the Year Johnny Podres, who had been turned down by Selective Service because of an ailing back, was reclassified 1-A after a new medical exam. Ready for his two-year hitch whenever it starts, Johnny said brightly, "I'll come out and play ball again." The Dodgers hoped so.

The U.S. Jr. Chamber of Commerce gave the U.S. Olympic team its biggest assist to date when Jaycee representatives at the Sugar Bowl presented a check for $250,000 toward the $1,100,000 needed to send the team to the games this year. In a joint venture with LIFE the Jaycees made collections at football and other games, sponsored dinners and telethons coast to coast.

Department of Justice lawyers had hoped their antitrust prosecution against the International Boxing Club ( James D. Norris, president) would begin in mid-January, but Federal Judge Sylvester Ryan said he could not possibly hear the case until April.

Murray Halberg, slender 22-year-old New Zealander with a crippled arm, has suddenly emerged as one of the bright running prospects for 1956. He ran the mile in 4:02.2 in an Auckland meet, thus reviving his promise of 1954, when he won the Penn Relays mile.

Nashua was welcomed to Hialeah by the mayor of Miami who presented him with a plastic key to the city festooned with carrots. Nashua nibbled the carrots politely, rolled in the fresh straw of his new stall, had his coat clipped and set out on a frisky half-mile workout, the first under his new orange-and-blue colors.

A $1 million offer for the New York football Giants was rejected by President John Mara, whose father bought the franchise for $2,500 in 1925. Mara explained, "The offer wasn't even as high as the bid for Nashua and I think our earning potential is higher than Nashua's."