Events & Discoveries

"I don't want to waste a lot of time fighting fellows I can knock out in a round or so," he said. "The IBC mentioned the No. 2 man, Zora Folley. Well, I beat him once [an amateur fight which was stopped because Folley got a bloody nose]. Eddie Machen—he's got about the same style. Willie Pastrano—he's a boxer and I like boxers; he's fancy, but he can't hurt you. That South American fellow, Alex Miteff, could. He's more of a puncher, but I'd fight him if it had to work out that way. I had lunch with Jack Kearns too this week. I have the impression that he's thinking of something for Joey Maxim. But I have a time limit on all this—maybe a year—and my real interest is working back to Patterson."

He rolled over on his stomach and peered happily across the footboard of the bed, apparently at a glistening future. "Who can he fight—and draw any kind of a gate—but me?" he asked himself. "I was ahead of him for four rounds," he went on, giving himself a couple not included in the official score. "I know in my heart and mind that the thing that beat me was condition. I was so busy promoting the fight that I didn't have time to build endurance. Patterson's speed stunned me but he didn't really hurt me. Look at me. My shoulders got tired, though, and so did my legs. I won't fight again until I'm ready to go 10 rounds."

If there was a certain illogic about this blithe interpretation of both the past and the future, it was difficult to say so, pointedly, to a man who had just turned the most illogical concept in the history of pugilism into a fullblown championship fight. Nevertheless, it was necessary to ask the large young man on the coverlet why he thought he could beat Patterson.

"He's easy to hit," he said. "I hit him with jabs all night. If the punch that knocked him down [and Rademacher will never agree that the champion tripped] had been two inches lower the fight might have been over then. As it was, it took his feet right out from under him." But he was contrite enough about the right he threw after Patterson got up—the punch the newspapers billed as his best of the fight. "I wasn't excited at all. I'd been taught what to do and I set him up. I feinted the left and walked up on him. Do that and you can't miss with the right. But I missed—he turned his head and it just grazed him." He sat up on the bed and put his arms on his knees.

"I saw the movies of the fight yesterday. They last 21 minutes and I was sweating all over the whole time. I kept seeing openings for the right. Rademacher didn't throw it."

OF MEN AND MACHINES

In case you have been worrying about the possibility that the calculating machines are imminently ready to take over from man, you'll be reassured to know that the machines are again bickering among themselves.

The latest story begins with the idea of a University of Pittsburgh publicity man named Beano Cook. He arranged for the university's IBM-650 computer to predict the results of Pitt's opener against Oklahoma on September 21. The keepers of the machine fed it a mass of data (weight and accomplishments of players, etc., etc.) on which the machine ruminated electronically, and in due course came the prediction: "Pitt by six points."

Apprised of this, Oklahoma's press agent, Harold Keith, decided to have his school's own new IBM-650, locally and affectionately known as The Idiot, make an educated guess on the same game. " Oklahoma 2 to 1," The Idiot said brightly. Oklahoma experts quickly converted this statement into a 12-6 or 14-7 margin for their team.

On statistical and scientific grounds, the Pitt people deplore The Idiot's findings. They feel that Oklahoma must have given him too much feed-back stuff about that 40-game winning streak—overlooking the fact that a lot of players who won for Bud Wilkinson in 1953 and 1954 aren't in Oklahoma uniforms any more. But, perhaps unscientifically, the Pitts are inclined to hedge. "Even machines," sighed Harley Thronson, IBM district manager in Pittsburgh, "can be affected by local pride. If I wager, I think I'll have to bet on Oklahoma."