[Jiggs McGee]

NOVEMBER 16, 1947 (evening edition)

Let's take a lazy Sunday drive around the Motor City sports scene as there is plenty happening, both good and bad, with your local heroes. We begin with a look at grid game where both the Maroons and collegiate Knights are enjoying some real success. Detroit City College is pulling out all the stops to win a national championship but those pesky Fighting Saints from St Blane are making them work for it. The Saints thumped St Magnus yesterday to stay perfect but the Knights had plenty to celebrate yesterday as well.

Detroit City College clinched its second straight trip to Santa Ana for the New Year's Day East-West Classic after a 41-7 pasting of the Wisconsin State Brewers in Milwaukee yesterday. The halfback due of Bill Howlin and hometown star Johnny Matthews came up big once again with Howlin perhaps cementing his All-American status with 3 touchdowns. That leaves only downtrodden Central Ohio, which sits at 0-4-1 in section play, standing in the way of a perfect regular season for the Knights.

The grid news from Cleveland earlier in the day was just as positive as Frank Yurik's boys rolled over the Finches 31-10 to set up a 3-way tie atop the West Division. The Maroons, Finches and the Chicago Wildcats are all at 6-2 as the season reaches two-thirds completed. The ground game remains king in Yurik's book, and well it should because he has good mixture of backs in Mark Belles, Marc Orlosky, Harry Claiborne and the punishing Troy Renton, but the pass is slowly becoming a 4-letter word Yurik will occasionally utter. Mike Beard is certainly never going to be mistaken for Del Thomas but he did a commendable job and had a couple of key completions to help keep drives going in Cleveland.

*** Tough Road Ahead For Maroons ***

It is good to see Yurik starting to mix things up a little bit on offense and perhaps the Maroons might return to the title game after falling a short a year ago. It will be tough sledding the rest of the way as the Barrell eleven have to travel for each of their final four games. However, the next three stops are in New York, St Louis and Cincinnati and all should be winnable games before they finish off in Philadelphia in what we hope will be a championship game preview.

Rollie Barrell's other team is also riding high right now. The cage Mustangs, after finishing dead last in the debut of the Federal Basketball League a year ago, are off to a perfect 3-0 start. David Reed and former DCC star Jack Kurtz have led the way with surprisingly easy wins over Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Cleveland. But those were all at Thompson Palladium and now the club heads out for its first road trip. Let's see how the Mustang quintet fares in Cincinnati and Cleveland this week before we pronouce them a team to pay attention to.

*** Dynamos Road Is Now Tougher ***

There have been plenty of logs tossed on the old hot stove in the baseball winter meetings. Things got so heated one would have figured the fire brigade might have been brought in but through it all the Dynamos were just casual observers as the New York Gothams loaded up on old-timers -or at least old timers by their standards. The Gothams added 4 players all over the age of thirty including potential Hall of Famers in Lefty Allen and George Cleaves.

The electrics scouting director Fred Barrell said the club did make some calls to Pittsburgh about Allen but the decision was made to stand pat and continue to follow their plan to allow the deep collection of young talent to improve together. The concern is the Dynamos chances of a flag raising next year -likely slim to begin with- just got a whole lot harder as the Gothams are loaded. Add in strong St Louis and Washington clubs, an improving team in Chicago and Keystones offense that could dominate if it just found someone beside Lloyd Stevens who could throw the ball with some success, and the Dynamos will have their work cut out for them.

The moves from New York are not a surprise -the Gothams wheel and deal high end talent at a much higher rate than most- but the fact they added the over 30 gang is a shock. The Gothams have been notorious for throwing a player out with the bath water once he leaves his twenties. It will be very interesting to see what happens if the Gothams get off to a slow start. There could be a meltdown of biblical proportions from their front office if the Gothams are 10 games out in early June.

***Motors Engine Finally Starting to Purr***

It was awful to watch the Motors the first month of the season but after a dreadful 1-6 start the Motors have won 3 of their last 5 games. The clubhouse was in turmoil and owner John Connolly Jr -fuming to see his old coach Jack Barrell get the best of his club 3 times in the opening month- was ready to make wholesale changes including replacing head coach Mark Moore. Back to back wins on the road over the weekend, including a 5-1 pasting of Barrell's Dukes, has given the club new hope. The decision to farm out young defenseman Mike Schlegel -who has plenty of talent but drew the wrath of many of his veteran teammates for an undisclosed incident at the start of training- has solved the dressing room battles, at least for the time being.

So all in all, the state of team sports in the Motor City is in pretty good shape right now. Will at last is another question entirely. And it sure would be nice to see a champion. We have the Knights East-West Classic victory last year and back to back GLA section titles but on the pro side things have been bleak. The Motors won their only Challenge Cup in the spring of 1939 and lost in the finals twice since then. The Maroons won 3 AFA titles in a 5 year span starting in 1927 but have won just one since. That came in 1936 and while they have been back in the championship game three times since then, they lost all three. Then we have the Dynamos, who have had plenty of ups and downs for nearly two decades but have not won a Federal Association flag since 1929. But at least we aren't in New York or Chicago.

DETROIT TIMES SUNDAY SPORTS CARTOON