Hey International Olympic Committee: Wrestling is not just an inaugural Olympic event – it is mankind’s first EVER sport. When our earliest human cubs bumped into each other on some prehistoric cave floor covered with mammoth hides, the “Games” officially began. Sure, getting pinned repeatedly no doubt inspired the invention of kick boxing (whose honest definition would be cheating at wrestling). And then once the cubs ventured outside certainly sprinting (from saber tooth tigers) would have evolved then methinks on to shot put, javelin and archery (to get back at the tigers)…and finally to where we are today what with squash, snowboarding and a biathlon where you ski a little, then shoot at something and repeat until someone has the good sense to tell you to just stop it. But, rest assured IOC – in the very hairy-barey-ass beginning – yes, Paul Harvey, even before farmers – God said “let there be WRESTLING.”
If you still don’t get this, just ask Homer, the world’s first sportswriter, about Plato and Socrates’ grapple-off for Athena’s hand or when Zeus out-wrestled Cronus for the mere possession of the universe.
Aside from defying all logic and treading on a time-honored legacy, this IOC idiocy is a huge strike two for me personally. The first strike was a curveball served up by the NCAA late last century when my alum (Loyola College, MD) was forced to drop the two inter-collegiate sports in which I dutifully participated – wrestling and baseball! This was to make room for women’s soccer and lacrosse due to Title 9, which, of course I loathed right up until my sweet daughter Jenny was born and now worship. How ironic that when women finally get into the sport of wrestling in 2004, the IOC scraps it just a decade later! And, btw, how does one scratch baseball and softball – successfully pinging their metal bats all over the globe?! To make matters infinitely worse, the Loyola Alumni office still has the stones to ring-a-ding me annually for a generous contribution to which I routinely retort “well before I write this hefty check – do tell how the wrestling and baseball teams are doing”. It’s as if the tortured spirits of Irsay and Modell are requesting a donation of my Johnny Unitas Colts jersey for display at the Indy Dome and want me to join Ravin’ Ray Lewis in a prayer service to save Baltimore’s Browned-out soul…ain’t gonna happen.
Strike three will no doubt be when the baseball and wrestling less 2024 Olympics snub the bids of both my native Baltimore or current home Pittsburgh.
Why I am so totally discombobulated is simply that wrestling and baseball have been in my family forever starting with my dear wild and woolly rascal Uncle Gus – Take a Wikipeek…
August ‘Gus’ Schoenlein ‘Americus’ (12-25-1883 to 7-17-1958)-Wrestler
August won his first welterweight match at Broadway Institute, St. Leo’s Gymnasium in 1901. He was an aspirant to the World Welterweight Title in 1908 and captured that title. August was an instructor at the Baltimore Athletic Club and as a wrestler was handled by Frank Lynch and Young Hart. On April 18, 1917, Americus first wrestled Ed “Strangler” Lewis for the World Heavyweight Title in Baltimore…
A NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT: “The match was most gruesome as well as scientific. Both men tore away at each other and the end seemed certain at any moment. After one hour and thirty-five minutes (my emphasis – today college bouts are merely the most exhausting 8 minutes of your entire life!) Americus raised Lewis with a crotch lift and, amid cheers that could be heard for a block, the first fall seemed assured. While in the air, Lewis fought desperately, causing the local pride to stumble, which resulted in both men falling in a heap. The ankle of Americus could be heard to snap by those close to the ring. As both men took a standing position it could be noticed that Gus was dragging his left leg. He, however, continued, and after fourteen minutes of excruciating pain, his seconds, after a conference, threw in the towel. Not until four physicians, including Dr. Roller, assured him that to continue would mean a compound fracture did Americus decide to quit.”
In 1919, Gus would wrestle his final match versus the legendary Nebraskan heavyweight Frank Gotch at the old Oriole Exhibition Park before thousands and lost on a toe hold – this match being advertised all over the country as the biggest sporting event of the day. Gus later coached Princeton’s wrestling team during the roaring 20s and when he passed, his wrestling gear was exhibited in the Enoch Pratt Library window in downtown Baltimore. Just this past year my son Ducky – who wrestled briefly in high school but majored in soccer and TV production in college – was on a film crew at some Princeton athletic event and spotted Uncle Gus’s picture hanging in their wrestling wall of fame!
I remember first coming face to face with the larger than life Uncle Gus when he graced a family holiday gathering at a famous German restaurant in Patterson Park called Haussner’s in 1952. Americus’ photo hung in the stag bar along with other lesser local celebs like Babe Ruth and H.L Mencken and making her usual Loretta Young entrance was his glamorous gal friend, a blonde bombshell from Scandinavia wearing a flowing mink coat and downright jingling with bling. We youngins were trained to call her “Aunt May” – a “Viking woman” who just “didn’t care” – according to our family’s whispering green e5yed matrons. Right before our collective stare, mighty Gus and May were committing the sin of perpetually living it up rather than marry or have kids and were thus considered divine by some and devilish by most.
Americus suddenly loomed over my pre-school frame like Tarzan over Cheetah and placed his huge mitts on my head and my brother’s shoulders demanding to know what we wanted to be when we grew up. My breathless response was “I just want to be a plain man”. A deafening, indeed defining, silence fell upon the room until big bro Jeff piped in with “I’m going to be a Baltimore Colts football player!” and everything went thankfully back to its normal buzz, save my fragile psyche which was busy swirling down the proverbial crapper.
I think Gus and May genuinely cared about us because they shared tickets to games and shows from time to time – especially since our dad had committed suicide when we were only 3 and 5 – over some nasty political turned economic squabbles with the Baltimore County of Spiro Agnew/Dale Anderson. To make a long story short, Vince Evans worked at the Bethlehem Steel shipyards during his greatest generation’s war but was blacklisted out of his job during the McCarthy era that followed because his older sis Birdie was involved with radical things like the Alger Hiss Defense Committee (ring a bell?) branding all within hollering distance of her – Reds!. Trying to rebound, Vince bought a 13 acre piece of land in NE Baltimore at a steal of a price on which he hoped to develop housing. He first renovated an old farm house on the property for our home sweet home but soon noticed that we were bookended in a somewhat surreal rural valley by two disturbing institutions: the Carney Rod and Gun Club to our far right and the Maryland Training School for Boys to our far left. On any given sultry summer evening from our front porch perch, we would be “entertained” either by rapid gunfire blasting away at the horrified scramble of local wildlife or witnessing a runaway chase scene of burly adults and yapping hounds pursuing a fleeing inner city teen, or two or three.
