Word: racketing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Animator Walter Lantz and his bride Gracie did not get much sleep on their 1941 honeymoon. Explains Walter, now 80: "It was this darned woodpecker. He made a terrible racket and ruined the roof of our cottage." Unable to silence the pest, Lantz made him immortal-by introducing the creature into one of his Andy Panda cartoons. "Universal Studios told me I ought to have my head examined," he recalls. "They said he's noisy, raucous, obnoxious; he'll never go." They were right, except on that last point. Now in his 40th year, Woody Woodpecker remains...
...cancellations proved a boon for ordinary Soviets, who got the unused tickets. They were as boisterous as old Brooklyn Dodger fans, though relying on ear-splitting whistles instead of clanging cowbells. Countrymen were cheered lustily, as long as they were winning, and foreign rivals were jeered, with gusto. The racket was deafening for visiting pole vaulters, who are accustomed to the polite silence accorded a golfer bending over his putt. Wladislaw Kozakiewicz of Poland finally shut up the unruly crowds with a world record (18 ft. 11 ½in.), then defiantly shook his arm at them. Said he: "The public...
...booming southpaw serves past a flatfooted Connors. The T.V. cameras clearly showed that the ball landed well within the prescribed box, but, inexplicably, the serve was termed a fault. Young McEnroe (who but two years ago was Young Upstart McEnroe) struck the hallowed Centre Court grass with his racket and stormed to the sidelines, unwilling to continue lest the rest of his future efforts meet with similar results. At first, the man in the high chair tried reason; "Mr. McEnroe will resume play," he intoned. When that failed, he turned to humiliation. "This is a public warning," he informed...
Even without the services of number-two player Howard Sands, the Harvard racket swingers had no trouble handing the Lions their first home loss of the year. The match was played on clay in the dingy confines of the Columbia Tennis Center...
...when Tulsa Editor Jenkin Lloyd Jones first used it in a 1948 speech to a convention of editorial writers. "Many an editorial writer can't hit a short-range target," Jones said. "It takes guts to dig up the dirt on the sheriff, or to expose a utility racket, or to tangle with the Governor. They all bite back, and you had better know your stuff. But you can pontificate about the situation in Afghanistan in perfect safety. You have no fanatic Afghans among your readers. Nobody knows more about the subject than you do, and nobody gives...