Sportsman Of 1956

Thrice last autumn, while sound boiled up from all the broad decks and crowded galleries of Melbourne's historic Cricket Ground, a rangy, dark-thatched and extraordinarily self-possessed young sprinter from Texas fled to victory ahead of the fastest runners in the world. Twice—in the Olympic 100-and 200-meter races—he won individual events and became the first man to thus gain two gold medals for the U.S. since the great Jesse Owens did so in Berlin back in 1936. He ran the anchor lap in the 400-meter relay and made another American triumph (and a new world record) certain with a final, unchallengeable burst of speed. In those exciting moments Bobby Joe Morrow of Abilene Christian College and the Valley of the Rio Grande earned clear title to the accolade: Sportsman of the Year for 1956.

Athletic prowess was not the sole reason for Bobby Morrow's selection, although it was an important factor indeed in a year so notable for excellence in sport. His multiple victories, gratifying though they may have been to his countrymen, could hardly have qualified him for the honor if they had not also served to dramatize the spirit as well as the accomplishments of the Olympic movement. But Bobby Morrow the unusual sprinter is also an unusual young man, and none symbolized more eloquently than he the ideals of sportsmanship which the athletes of the U.S. Olympic team took with them to Australia.

They were ideals which often seemed extraordinarily perishable during the troubled Olympic year 1956, but which, by the same token, also seemed extraordinarily precious. In seeking a successor to England's Roger Bannister (1954) and Brooklyn's cool young Pitcher Johnny Podres (1955), it would have been difficult to deny an Olympic athlete who embodied them as did Morrow—and who could run like a scalded cat into the bargain.

For all this, Bobby Morrow was hard pressed by other deserving athletes in 1956, a year of glittering performances and great moments in many fields of sport. Mickey Mantle gave the grand old game of baseball a peculiar kind of excitement which it had not known since the days of Babe Ruth. The broad-backed, boyish Yankee outfielder, now 25, had a wonderful season generally, but it was his prodigal early-summer production of home runs that stirred the public soul. Mantle ended up with 52, eight short of Ruth's record, but for the first time in decades, fans turned out to marvel at soaring drives made at the expense of their own teams. Meanwhile, that aging Giant discard, Sal Maglie, was sold to the Dodgers and all but hypnotized National League batters in one of the most heart-warming comebacks on the mound in modern times. And in October the Yankees' tall night owl, Don Larsen, performed the Miracle-in-The- Bronx by pitching the first perfect game in 34 years and the only no-hitter ever accomplished in a World Series.

Floyd Patterson became heavyweight champion of the world at 21—the youngest in the history of the prize ring. Few fighters of such obvious talent were ever so consistently downgraded by the so-called experts as was Patterson in the first four years of his professional career. The International Boxing Club steadily refused him fights at Madison Square Garden during his climb to the top, and after his victory over Tommy (Hurricane) Jackson last June—won the hard way with a broken right hand—the New York sportswriters tolerantly characterized him as a deserving tyro who could not hit. His savage grace, his weaving, highhanded defense and the thunderclap punching which stopped Archie Moore and won him the championship seemed to burst upon them and upon the television public (which had seldom been allowed to see him) as a revelation. But, revelation or not, Patterson was enthusiastically accepted as a worthy successor to Rocky Marciano.

Nineteen fifty-six was not only an Olympic year, it was a great one for track and field all around the world, and many of its memorable feats took place at Melbourne within a few hours of Bobby Morrow's own triumphs. Russia's incomparable Vladimir Kuts, the only other man to emerge from the main stadium a double gold medal winner, not only succeeded Czechoslovakia's storied Emil Z�topek as the world's greatest distance runner but—by the manner in which he won the 5,000-and 10,000-meter races—proved himself, indisputably, the greatest distance runner of all time. Fordham's big Tom Courtney also made track history; for sheer courage and wild drama nothing in the Games quite touched his finish in the 800-meter run—although he was almost unconscious from exhaustion and quite obviously beaten 30 yards from the tape, he somehow managed a second stretch drive, overtook England's Derek Johnson and flung himself over the line first.

Ireland's (and Villanova University's) young Ron Delany beat the greatest field of milers ever assembled in winning the Olympic 1,500 meters. Australia's world record holder, John Landy, failed to gain his heart's desire, a victory for his country in the metric mile. But Landy stamped his name on the year 1956 nevertheless; his third-place run in the Olympics, made on crippled legs, was a feat of gallantry in itself, and the world of track would not soon forget how he flew 8,000 miles to California last spring and then ran two sub-four-minute miles in eight days.

Nineteen-year-old Charles Dumas of Los Angeles high-jumped seven feet plus a half inch at the Olympic trials, the first amateur ever to clear the magic height in competition (professional basketball's Walt Davis having twice jumped seven feet during exhibitions in 1955). That dedicated old cannoneer, Parry O'Brien, threw the 16-pound shot 63 feet 2 inches—extending his own world record by more than 2 feet and heightening his pre-eminence among weight men. New Jersey's husky Milt Campbell broke the Olympic decathlon record. At the Winter Olympics in Cortina, Italy, Austria's engaging Toni Sailer performed sensationally as he swerved and plummeted to victory in the downhill, the slalom and the giant slalom.

Handsome Frank Gifford, left half back of New York's football Giants, earned the professional leagu�s most-valuable-player award with dazzling bursts of ball carrying. Notre Dame Quarterback Paul Hornung, playing on the worst Irish eleven since World War I, performed game-day miracles all by himself—and was quite possibly the best college back of the year.

Endless others earned the right to admiration and applause: the Hungarian Olympians (see page 20) for coursing the world as flag bearers of freedom; gentle, 82-year-old Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons for his final successes with Nashua—and his first with a new potential champion, Bold Ruler; England's Donald Campbell for driving his jet-powered speedboat Bluebird 280 miles an hour despite choking engine fumes and nightmarish vibration; Althea Gibson, the Negro girl who made good in big-time tennis, and Australia's Ken Rosewall and Lew Hoad for their domination of all the world's courts; Avery Brundage, despite the hornets' nests he stirred up, for his stubborn insistence on pure amateurism; California's special boxing investigator, James Cox, and New York's boxing commissioner, Julius Helfand, for their effective drives against the crooks and leeches of pugilism; and many more.