1938 - Sports

Sports

Golfer Harry Vardon dies of pleurisy at his Totteridge, Hertfordshire, home March 20 at age 66; judo founder Jigoro Kano May 4 at age 77 aboard the S.S. Hikawa Maru en route home from Cairo, where he conferred with Olympic Committee officials about making judo an Olympic event (it will be beginning in 1964).

San Francisco-born Stanford University basketball star Angelo Enrico "Hank" Luisetti, 21, ends a 4-year career with a total of 1,596 points. The first player to have scored 50 points in a game, he is credited with having introduced the one-handed shot.

Tennis legend Suzanne Lenglen dies of pernicious anemia at Paris July 4 at age 39.

Don Budge wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Forest Hills, France, and Australia, the first "grand slam" and one not to be duplicated for 24 years; Helen Wills Moody wins in women's singles at Wimbledon, Alice Marble at Forest Hills.

The New York Yankees win the World Series, defeating the Chicago Cubs 4 games to 0.

Italy wins the third World Cup football (soccer) finals, defeating Hungary 4 to 2 at Colombes, France; no further World Cup games will be held until 1950.

War Admiral starts as a 1-4 favorite over Seabiscuit in a November 1 match race at Pimlico before a crowd of 40,000; Seabiscuit wins (see 1937). Jockey Eddie Arcaro, now 22, has won his first Kentucky Derby in May.

Naval architect-engineer-yacht designer Nathanael Greene Herreshoff dies at his native Bristol, R.I., June 2 at age 90. The Lightning introduced by New York-based Sparkman & Stephens is a 16-foot family raceboat (19 feet in length overall) with a centerboard that will be the firm's most popular design (see Mustang, 1935; Ranger, 1937). Six feet six inches in the beam, the sloop carries 177 square feet of sail and draws four feet 11 inches with her centerboard down (but only five inches when the board is up); some 15,000 will be built, many of them on a home-made basis from kits.

Fiberglass begins to supplant wood in pleasure boat hulls, surfboards, skis, etc.