Word: amateurs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...family tells the story, Phil Niekro Sr. was the first one to throw the knuckleball. He used the pitch to confound batters on the amateur baseball teams around the coal mines of Ohio and West Virginia where he worked. Later, he taught it to his elder son Phil, who by the age of eight could dig his fingertips into the ball and send it floating without spin toward the strike zone, dipping and zigzagging in the air currents. Younger Son Joe tried the pitch, but his hands were too small, so he concentrated on the conventional pitcher's repertory...
...which Ansel Adams' grandfather owned. But around the turn of the century the family lost six mills by fire and 27 lumber ships at sea, all of them woefully underinsured. After 1912, faced by the ruin of his timber interests, Adams' father, a mild, benevolent man with a deep amateur interest in astronomy, made a career at life insurance. He continued to raise his only child in Edwardian respectability, in a chalet-like house overlooking the Golden Gate...
Only five years ago, tennis was booming. Top players were getting seven-figure contracts to play with pro teams, big companies were fighting to sponsor tournaments, and TV networks were broadcasting even routine matches. On the amateur level, a game that could claim just 14 million adult regular players in 1972 had by 1976 some 26 million participants eager to invest in such paraphernalia as fluorescent balls, designer outfits, $30 shoes and $62 carbon steel racquets. Now the game has gone soft, at least as a business...
...American men's basketball team was an artistic success but a Scoreboard failure, finishing fifth. Hastily recruited from the second tier of amateur players-most of the best played instead in the Pan American Games-the youthful Americans were unschooled in international rules and woefully short on muscle and experience. Nevertheless, their fluid fakes and brilliant improvisations drew large crowds, even to their practice sessions. A bravura moment came when Herb Williams, 21, a forward from Ohio State, slammed home a fearsome dunk against Yugoslavia and shattered the backboard in the process. After a moment of startled silence...
...years to win the marathon, and the attention he received helped quicken interest in the running boom. In 1976 Shorter came back to win a silver medal in Montreal. His 140-mile training weeks left him little opportunity to support himself as a lawyer, however, so he challenged the Amateur Athletic Union's rules prohibiting sports-related income. In a precedent-setting case that has helped other athletes, Shorter convinced the A.A.U. that his manufacturing of running gear should not affect his amateur status. Shorter is also drumming up corporate support for amateur athletes. "In the old days the A.A.U...