Meanwhile, unemployment doesn't appear to be declining to any great extent, the economy is in the shitter, and few jobs are being created.
But hey, SSM is far more important than whether people live or die.
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Babe Didrikson Zaharias may have been the greatest all-around athlete, but in the year of her centennial, she appears to be forgotten even in her hometown:
But if her name may mean increasingly little to a young generation of sports fans, Didrikson, who was born 100 years ago, was perhaps America’s greatest all-around athlete, male or female.
No athlete excelled at more sports and games than Didrikson. She was an all-American basketball player, a two-time Olympic track and field gold medalist and a golf champion who won 82 tournaments, including an astonishing 14 in a row. One of the 13 founding members of the L.P.G.A., Didrikson became the first woman to play against men in a PGA Tour event and the first American to win the British Women’s Amateur Championship. She was also an outstanding baseball, softball, tennis and billiards player, diver and bowler.
...
Perhaps Didrikson’s most spectacular athletic achievement occurred at the amateur track and field championships in Evanston, Ill., on July 16, 1932. She was the lone representative of Employers Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas, competing against company teams of 12, 15, even 22 women. When Didrikson was introduced, she ran onto the field by herself, her arms waving wildly. The crowd gasped at the audacity of this “one-woman track team” (a phrase Didrikson coined).
Over the course of three hours on a sweltering track, she sprinted from event to event, with barely enough time to catch her breath. She finished first in five events: broad jump, shot-put, javelin, 80-meter hurdles and the baseball throw. She tied for first in a sixth event, the high jump. In qualifying for three Olympic events, she amassed a total of 30 team points for Employers Casualty. The second-place team, the Illinois Women’s Athletic Club, scored 22 points — with 22 athletes.
Truth is definitely stranger than fiction.
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Obituaries: Fred Steiner, 88, best known as the composer of the theme of the television series Perry Mason.
Track vet Mark Gerard, 76, of a stroke. He was famous for treating Secretariat and other famous racehorses, but he ruined his reputation when he got involved in a betting scandal:
But a $200,000-a-year practice wasn't enough, and in 1977 Gerard put over one of the biggest betting coups in New York history, running a champion from South America in a cheap horse's name and collecting almost $80,000 on bets. He put it over, that is, until racing officials investigated. For running a very good horse under the name of a cheap plater, Gerard was sentenced to a year in prison. He was only in his 40s, but his career as a caretaker for marquee horses was over._____
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