FW: Supreme Court's Earl Warren reads the sports pages first -- is this from Yale's William Lyon Phelps?

Thu Jun 28 12:29:55 UTC 2012

Barry sent the message below to several ads-l members. I now forward it
to the entire list.

Gerald Cohen

________________________________________
From: Barry Popik [bapopik at aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 5:19 AM
Subject: Supreme Court's Earl Warren reads the sports pages first -- is this from Yale's William Lyon Phelps?

What a day. A Supreme Court decision and the NBA draft!
...
Earl Warren famously said that he reads the sports pages first. The YBQ
and Wikiquote (you can correct them; I can't cite my own work) have
1968, but I also found the quote in 1967.
...
Also, the spirt of the quote appears to come from Yale's William Lyon
Phelps.
...
Teddy Roosevelt was credited in 1971, but I haven't found anything to
support this. You can share this with ADS-L and with Yale if you wish.
...
Barry Popik
Austin, TX
www.barrypopik.com
...
...
http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_sports_page_records_peoples_accomplishments_and_the_front_page_has_noth/
Entry from June 28, 2012

“The sports page records people’s accomplishments and the front page
has nothing but man’s failures”

Many people read the sports section of a newspaper first, even before
the front page. One famous person who did this was Earl Warren
(1891-1974), the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In
October 1967, Warren explained, “The front page advertises man’s
failures; the sports pages report men’s achievements.” In July 1968,
Warren said, “They say the sports page records people’s accomplishments
and the front page has nothing but man’s failures.”

Warren might have been paraphrasing from Yale University professor
William Lyon Phelps (1865-1943), who wrote in his Autobiography (1939):

“Yet the fact that the majority of men turn first of all to the
sporting page of the newspaper can be accounted for on the ground that
the first page is usually a record of failures—failures in business,
failures in the art of living together, failures in citizenship, in
character, and many other things; whereas the sporting page is a record
of victories. It contains some good news, a commodity so rarely found
on the first page.”

Wikiquote: Earl Warren
Earl Warren (19 March 1891 – 9 July 1974) was the 30th Governor of
California (1943–1953) and 14th Chief Justice of the United States
(1953-1969).

Sourced
I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records
people’s accomplishments; the front page nothing but man’s failures.
 . As quoted in Sports Illustrated (22 July 1968)
. Variants:
. I always turn to the sports page first, which records people’s
accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man’s failures.
 .. As quoted in Best Sports Stories: 1975 (1976) by Irving T. Marsh
. I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people’s
accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man’s failures.
  .. As quoted in The Norton Book of Sports (1992) by George Plimpton,
p. 470

Wikipedia: William L. Phelps
William Lyon Phelps (January 2, 1865 New Haven, Connecticut - August
21, 1943 New Haven, Connecticut) was an American author, critic and
scholar. He taught the first American university course on the modern
novel. He was a well-known speaker who drew large crowds. He had a
radio show, wrote a daily syndicated newspaper column, lectured
frequently, and published numerous popular books and articles.

Google Books
October 1932, The Rotarian, pg. 18:
Touchdown!
By Fielding H. Yost
Director of Athletics, University of Michigan
(...)
WE hear criticism of the emphasis given sports by the newspapers. We
hear slighting criticism of the man who buys and reads the newspaper
for its sports section alone. We hear criticism of the “over-emphasis”
placed on football. This criticism never disturbs me, for I believe
that if there are enough men, in the welter and turmoil of the modern
world, who find time to interest themselves in clean, virile sport, we
can point to these men as unfailing signs of an ultimate salvation for
us all. I would far rather have America be called a nation of sports
enthusiasts than (Pg. 19—ed.) a nation of money-grabbers. I would far
rather have my boy study the sports section than the stock-market
pages, or, for that matter, the lurid first-page stories of the world’s
woes and sordid scandals.

Google Books
Autobiography:
with letters
By William Lyon Phelps
Oxford: Oxford University Press
1939
Pg. 356:
The love of most men for sport and their absorbing interest in it
cannot perhaps be defended rationally; it is an instinct going deeper
than reason. Men like W.H. Hudson, Bernard Shaw, and others to whom
sport was abhorrent, were without “sporting blood.” Yet the fact that
the majority of men turn first of all to the sporting page of the
newspaper can be accounted for on the ground that the first page is
usually a record of failures—failures in business, failures in the art
of living together, failures in citizenship, in character, and many
other things; whereas the sporting page is a record of victories. It
contains some good news, a commodity so rarely found on the first page.

Google Books
Bury Me in an Old Press Box:
Good Times and Life of a Sportswriter
By Fred Russell
New York, NY: A. S. Barnes and Company
1957
Pg. VIII:
But I believe that most people who turn to the sports page first do so
because there is so little fun anywhere else in the paper. The
“funnies” are not even called that anymore, and the term “comic strip”
is a gross misnomer for all but a few. As for the front page, it seems
eternally permeated with the perils of our position in the Middle East,
arguments among politicians, automobile wrecks and bad weather.

Google News Archive
7 October 1967, St. Petersburg (FL) Times, “Warren: Dedicated Baseball
Man” by Drew Pearson, pg. 7A, col. 1:
  WASHINGTON—For the first time in 14 years, Washington’s No. 1 baseball
fan is not able to watch the entire World Series. He is tied up on the
Supreme Court.
 (...)
Most people connect Earl Warren with school desegregation or
complicated legal decisions. But he has a secret sideline—sports. He
reads the sport pages in the morning before he reads the front page
headlines because, he says, “The front page advertises man’s failures;
the sports pages report men’s achievements.”

9 July 1968, Omaha (NE) World-Herald, Sports Section, pg. 13, col. 1:
Chief Justice Earl Warren Reads Sports Section First
By Jerome Holtzman
Chicago Sun-Times Service.
Earl Warren, the retiring Chief Justice of the United States Supreme
Court, revealed that he is an inveterate sports page reader.

“I suppose I’m like every one else—I always turn to the sports section
first,” he said.

Chief Justice Warren then added: “You know what they say. They say the
sports page records people’s accomplishments and the front page has
nothing but man’s failures.”

Sports Illustrated
July 22, 1968
They Said It
Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the U.S.: “I always turn to the sports
section first. The sports page records people’s accomplishments; the
front page has nothing but man’s failures.”

Sports Illustrated
August 26, 1968
19th Hole: The Readers Take Over
PRECEDENTED DECISION
Sirs:
I am a charter subscriber, and this is my first letter to one of my
favorite and more enjoyable magazines. In “They Said It” (SCORECARD,
July 22) you attribute to Chief Justice Earl Warren: “I always turn to
the sports section first. The sports page records man’s
accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man’s failures.” I read
the quote many years ago—and at that time it belonged to the late
William Lyon Phelps, professor of English literature at Yale.
 WILLIAM M. CLINES
Los Angeles

Professor Phelps, a sports enthusiast, tennis player, golfer, baseball
fan and a distance runner in his college days, phrased the same thought
somewhat less succinctly in his Autobiography with Letters: “The love
of most men for sport and their absorbing interest in it cannot perhaps
be defended rationally; it is an instinct going deeper than reason....
The fact that the majority of men turn first of all to the sporting
page of the newspaper can be accounted for on the ground that the first
page is usually a record of failures—failures in business, failures in
the art of living together, failures in citizenship, in character, and
many other things; whereas the sporting page is a record of victories.
It contains some good news, a commodity so rarely found on the first
page."—ED.

Google Books
San Diego magazine
Volume 23
1971
Pg. 10:
Teddy Roosevelt’s line about looking at the sports page first because
it listed man’s accomplishments and the front page last because it
recorded man’s failures would have to be amended.

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