Life, 1922-02-02 · page 8 of 34
Life — February 2, 1922 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical article pokes fun at sportswriters struggling to find newsworthy winter athletic events. Benchley complains that Miami has inadequate football talent and that baseball training camps haven't started, leaving the sporting press with little to cover—hence their resort to publishing trivial stories. The cartoon illustrates this desperation through a humorous anecdote: two boys discuss their new neighbor, with one claiming the boy is "awful hard to pick a fight with." The joke appears to mock how sportswriters, lacking significant events, resort to covering mundane neighborhood activities and children's squabbles as if they were sports news. The piece satirizes the newspaper industry's struggle during winter's slow sports season.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘HESE are melancholy days for the newspaper sporting-writers. The complaints are all in from old grads of Miami who feel that there weren't enough Miami men on the All-Ameri- can football team, and it is too early to begin writing about the baseball training camps. Once in a while some lady swimmer goes around a tank three hundred times, or the holder of the Class B squash championship “meets all-comers in court tilt,” but aside from that, the sporting world is buried with the nuts for the winter. Since -sporting-writers must live, why not introduce a few items of gen- eral interest into their columns, accounts of the numerous contests of speed and endurance which take place during the winter months in the homes of our citizenry? For instance: Billy: Bobbie: LIFE Mid-Winter Sports Robert C. Benchley The nightly race between Mr. and Mrs. Theodore M. Twamly, to see who can get into bed first, leaving the open- ing of the windows and putting out of the light for the loser, was won last night for the first time this winter by Mr. Twamly. Strategy entered largely into the victory, Mr. Twamly getting into bed with most of his clothes on. ek Ok An interesting exhibition of en- durance was given by Martin W. Las- bert at his home last evening when he covered the distance between the cold- water tap in his bath-room to the bed- side of his young daughter, Mertice, eighteen times in three hours, this being the number of her demands for water to drink. When interviewed after the eighteenth lap, Mr. Lasbert said: “I wouldn’t do it another time, not if the child were parching.” Shortly after that he made his nineteenth trip. kok Ok As was exclusively predicted in these columns yesterday and in accordance with all the dope, Chester H. Flerlie suffered his sixtieth consecutive defeat last evening at the hands of the Ameri- can Radiator Company, the builders of his furnace. With all respect for Mr. Flerlie’s pluck in attempting, nigh! after night, to dislodge clinkers caught in the grate, it must be admitted, even by his host of friends, that he might much better be engaged in some gainful oc- cupation. The grate tackled by the doughty challenger last night was one of the fine-tooth comb variety (the “Non-Sifto” No. 114863), in which the How d’ye like the new boy that moved in next door to you, Bobbie? He’s not much good. He is awful hard to pick a fight with. comicbooks.com