Editor’s note: While the games are on pause, the Globe is reaching into its archives to bring you “Replay,” stories and columns from the past that highlight something interesting, timely, or revealing. This column by Harold Kaese, who died 45 years ago on May 10, appeared in the Globe on Thursday, March 1, 1973, under the headline, “Sports gimmicks thrive thanks to TV.”
The sports world of the future will be different from that of the present. A hint of what is coming was the Florida real estate advertising stunt, The Superstars, in which top performers from various pro sports competed in an all-round event for a lot of money.
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The sports novelty is on the way, thanks to television. A handful of people might have gone to remote Rotunda West to see Joe Frazier try to swim 50 yards and Elvin Hayes swing at a baseball. Millions saw it on TV.
Next: a potato sack race between Hank Aaron and Dick Allen? Hopscotch between Franco Harris and Larry Csonka?
On TV it would look good. On TV anything looks good to a lot of people.
One of the first TV sports novelties was the NBA’s one-on-one competition, now on for the second consecutive year. Without TV, it would have remained a fun game for the gym. With TV, it’s a money-winner.
A sports novelty in the offing: Bobby Riggs, 55, against a woman tennis player — Billie Jean King, Margaret Court, Chris Evert, or any woman tennis player who will take him on for $5,000.
Something like this is a natural for Riggs, a born gambler who won many a side bet at many a tennis club when he was in his amateur and professional prime. Jack Lynch recalls a fun match he was playing against an older Riggs.
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"I led, 5-4, and had the serve. Changing courts, he said, ‘How about a little bet?’
" ‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Beating you will be thrill enough for me.’
"Riggs got mad. I may have seemed cocky to him, but I felt he was taking advantage of me. Anyhow, I served the next game very well, and yet he passed me three times with balls that hit two inches inside the line.
“You never could tell how hard Riggs was trying. He liked to set up opponents for bets.”
Is Riggs setting up King, Court, Evert? There must be 500-1,000 men in the country who can beat those women tennis champions, but is Riggs — at 55 — one of them?
One fellow who will never underrate Riggs is Ed Serues, Amherst tennis and squash coach. While they were in the Navy, they played 48 exhibitions, and Riggs won all 48.
“Some were close,” said Serues, "but he always won. Later, they called me at home and asked me to fly to Montreal and play Riggs in a tournament.
"Instead, I jumped in a car and drove up, and he beat me in the first round, 6-0, 6-1.
" ‘That’s 49 times in a row you’ve beaten me, Bobby,’ I told him. ‘I guess I’ll have to admit you’re better than I am.’ "
Any time money was on the line, Riggs thrived. He was a big gambler and strong competitor. Even at 55, $10,000 just might bring back some of his old speed and skill.
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Before long, TV may be bringing us such sports novelties as housewives’ pancake races (sponsored by a flour company), weightlifting contests with barrels of beer for weights (sponsored by a brewery), tugs of war competitions (sponsored by a pills-for-pull company), three-legged races (sponsored by a togetherness society).
Pushing-a-peanut-with-your-nose may be a $250,000 sweepstakes (first round, quarterfinals, etc.) on TV within the next decade.
All such events have to be carried on the sports pages, of course. If Fischer-Spassky could make it, why not putting the shot with both hands? Why not “The Game” and other lotteries being conceived as Massachusetts politicians dream of ways for exploiting what Mencken called “the silliest of vices,” and expanded his sentiments with: “The taste for gambling, like the taste for sports, is a kind of feeble-mindedness, maybe even an insanity.”
As poor Ophelia says, “I hope all will be well. We must be patient.”
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In 1973, made-for-TV sports novelties were seen as inevitable and worrisome - The Boston Globe
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