The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-10-15
SPORTING NOTES

1noT0 IS one DdlI CluD III T IdICS that has valid reason for it's claim to being the champion team of the service. This particular regimental team boasts of such celebrities as Grover Cleveland Alexander of the Cubs, Win Moves of the Mackmen, Otis Lambeth, who was formerly with the Cleveland Indians; Chuck Ward who formerly played with the Pitts burgh and Brooklyn clubs; Clarence Mitchell of the Robins, Clark of Illinois University, Page Lewis, who was formerly a, star athlete at Wash
 ing University; Brown, a member of a crack independent team at Kansas City; Lindsey of the University of Kansas and several others who have had much experience in baseball, though they may not all be well known to major league fans.
 Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of John L. Sullivan, to whom all men paid homage when he went to his last resting place almost a year ago. There will be many who will drink to his memory, not with the grape, but with bumper of cold Wdl6kP Wu1Cu was JOIln IL. ; 1dNOIIlG beverage during the last years of his life. If Sullivan, in his time, con- quered all men who faced him, there was greater foe whom he vanquish- ed, after he had almost succumbed himself, and that foe was John Bar leycorn.
 The story of Sullivan's rise and fall and subsequent rehabilitation is scarcely Sunday school literature, yet it provides a moral and a golden text that could be used with effect by the w. c. T. U. Sullivan was not one of those who 'tcould take it or leave it alone" For years he took it, and it was his proudest boast that he could consume more mixed drinks than any other man on earth. But when he found that the road he was travelling 1 was leading inevitably to the gutter, he quit. Having established record of sixty-five gin fizzes in an hour-a record that will probably stand for all time-John L. climbed aboard the water wagon, and he became that bluff, gruff, gray old gentleman, sob CT and temperate in all things, thrifty i yet open handed to those in distress, that the world knew him to be dur | ing the last years of his life, when agriculture and politics interested him more than pugilism. Over a quarter of a century ago has passed since that day in New Orleans when science was pitted against brute strength, and science, in the person 1 of James J. Corbett, was the victor; ! yet to the last John L. wore that air of kindly arrogance and superiority that was his by right when he was an
 emperor of the worlds gladiators, John L. had lost his crown, but, in
 spirit, he was none the less a king.
 Sixty years ago today the stork left a boy at a little home near Boston
 where dwelt the Sullivans, from Coun-
 tJs Kerry. John Lawrence the pfoud parents named him, and he grew up
 to be a husky lad, and at sixteen was much larger than his father. John
 was given a common school education
 and then got a job in a store. He
 was fired" because of a tendency tc
 place baseball above business, Ther
 he took to boxing, and in amateur
 circles gained a reputation as "the
 Boston Strong Boy" His first i'm
 portant professional bout was witf
 Joe Goss, then champion. It was 6 |, four-round exhibit affair, but old Joe got enough of Sullivan long before ! the four rounds were finished. JohI
 L. was then twenty years old, weigh ed about 1S0 pounds, and stood five feet ten and a half inches. In 1SSt Billy Madden took Sullivan under hi' managerial wing and issued defiance
 to> all corners.