V 13 N. 77 A Math Lesson, An Old Mag, and an 'Older' Runner Sport Magazine Oscar Moore

 August 22, 2023

Fourth Day of World Championships.  Need a break.   I'm going nuts with metric measurements and have been asked for English equivalents by some.  It's too much trouble for an 80 year old part time blogger to make all those conversions.   I remember in high school about 65 years ago learning that 39.37 inches equals a meter.  or was it 39.36?   I'll do a few conversions for your convenience, but not all of them.  As stated to someone earlier in the day,  you can use the following link to get a conversion device

Metrics to Feet      clik on this link and do the conversion.   There is a downside.  You will get a number like   15.28 feet.  You will still have to convert 0.28 feet to inches by multiplying  0.28 x 12.    If your fifth grade teacher did you a service on estimating, you should know that 0.28 is approximately one fourth of a foot or 3 inches.   Close enough?

Now for something entirely different.   Last week I did my weekly visit to the thrift store in Courtenay, BC and found some 1962 Sports Illustrated magazines and a 1965 Sport Magazine.   The Sport Mag featured a bunch of articles on young athletes, such as Dean Chance, Charlie Taylor, Jerry Lucas, Don Schollander, Jack Nicklaus, Randy Matson, Pete Gogolak  all of whom I'm sure you remember.  However what caught my eye was a short piece in the section called Sport Talk about distance runner Oscar Moore.  You remember him of course.  A very good 5,000 meter runner.  Olympics.com says this about him.      

Oscar Moore was a distance runner for Southern Illinois and the NY Pioneer Club. He finished third in the 1964 AAU 10K, and fifth in the 1963 5K. At the NCAA Meet, Moore finished second in the 10K and fourth in the 5K in 1967, and was fourth in the 10K in 1966. Moore had started at Southern Illinois after four years in the US Marine Corps (1956-60). He later earned a masters’ degree from SIU, during which time he was assistant director of the Student Center.

In 1971 Moore started the men’s track & field program at Glassboro State College, which later became Rowan University. He led the team to the New Jersey Athletic Conference Championship for 19 straight years. Moore also coached the women’s team for seven years, 1986-92. In his honor the Oscar Moore Invitational Track & Field Championships are held each April by Rowan University.

Personal Bests: 1500 – 3.45.7 (1967); Mile – 4.06.2 (1967); 2 miles – 8.38.1i (1967); 5000 – 13.51.31 (1967); 10000 – 29.27.77 (1966); 3000S – 9.02.8 (1964).

Well, Sport Magazine, thought enough of Oscar Moore in 1965 to mention his plight as an 'amateur' athlete.  I'll transcribe the article because it may be hard to read from the photo.  Yes, I paid $3.99 for the magazine but it was Canadian $ about 0.75 US $.   And I got a 30% senior discount on Tuesday.  You math obsessive compulsives can do the calculation.  

                             "The Joblessness of the Long Distance Runner"  

                                                       by Berry Stainback

                                                   Sport Magazine, April, 1965

To make the U.S. Olympic team, athletes give up a great deal, in time and mental and physical suffering.  But if they make the team the sacrificing usually ends.  It didn't for Oscar Moore, who made the last team as a 5000-meter runner and went to Tokyo.  This cost him his job.

        Since Oscar Moore has two children and a wife to support, the job loss was a big sacrifice.  His boss warned him when he went to California for the final Olympic qualifications that he had to either be a runner or a job-holder, not both.

        "I didn't think I'd make it." Oscar said recently.  "I just went out there for the competition because it was on the weekend and I was off work.  My coach was training me for '68, that was what I was looking forward to."

        But Moore fooled himself and the experts by qualifying for the team.  "I wrote my boss from California,: Oscar said, "and then I wrote him from Tokyo.  He never answered.  I thought it was unfair that he fired me because I had an important job.  I was a production supervisor for a firm that makes gold jewelry.  I had keys to the building and the safe combination and sometimes I'd come in early and start everything.  There were eight jewelers and polishers under me."

        He was asked if his training interfered with his work.

        "No, because I never took time off to train or go to any races.  I only ran on the weeknd and I only train on my own time, like in the morning or 10 o'clock at night after overtime and I still train.  But it was the busiest season when I went away and my boss would have to do my work.  I thought it was unfair because he coulda done it for just those three weeks, considering all the time I put in there.  It was going on my fourth year."

        Moore did not qualify for the finals in Tokyo.  He did, however get a new job while over there.  Arnold Bakers saw a newspaper story on Moore's job loss and wrote him that they had a job awaiting him.  Moore likes the new job.  He also likes his chances in the next Olympics, which he is already training for(in two months after getting home Moore won a five-mile , two six-mile and a nine-mile cross country race, plus his first marathon).  He'd run only six or seven races in high school and a few in the Marines up until four years ago.

        "I think with the experience I had this time I can do better in '68, "  Oscar said.  "This'll only really be my fourth year of running.  And Mr. Arnold said I don't have to worry about my job next time."

Editor's Note:   Unfortunately for Oscar he blew out an achilles tendon and could not compete in the 1968 Olympic Trials.   

Ernie Cunliffe wades in on metric:  To simplify what a metric mark means to me:   if I want to get close I multiply by 3.3 to get feet but if I want to get very close I google in the metric mark and say metric equals feet ie:   if 40 meters is the mark, I multiply by 3.3 to get 132 feet.   If I want a closer conversion I put in google:   40 meters to feet and get 131.234 and as you mention I can multiply the .234 x 12 which would get you 2.808.  So the net result would be 131 feet and about 3 more inches but in competition it would round down to 2+inches.

Thanks Ernie, 

It gets more complex with air temp and Celsius and Fahrenheit.   Freezing point of water in Celsius is 0 degrees.   Freezing point in Fahrenheit is 32.  I think the degrees are about the same size however.  So if it is 10 degrees Celsius, you double the number and add 32 to get Fahrenheit (approximately).   That way a metric six pack of beer is 44 beers     2x6 + 32 = 44.   The McKenzie Brothers Theorem of Beer.

George, 

    So glad you found and transcribed the article on Oscar Moore. I don't think I had heard about his job travails. It especially interests me since in April 1961 I crushed Moore in a 4.1 mile road race. Well over two minutes. Of course I had the wee bit of benefit of a 5 minute head start in a handicap race in which Oscar was the scratch man. I was in grad school at Columbia, living on Long Island and hadn't run a race since my junior year of college in the fall of 1957. I happened to see a middle aged runner when I was driving somewhere, so I stopped to ask him about road racing. It was Aldo Scandurra, one of the first presidents of the Road Runners Club. He encouraged me and after two weeks of training he encouraged me to do the handicap race. I was, of course, far from fit but thought I could run 6:00 pace and figured that with a 5 minute head start no one could beat me. They gave me the max head start because they had no idea if I could run. But they also gave a couple of other road racers the same lead, which was really unfair to Moore since they knew what those guys could do. I ran my guts out, ran 24:01, and won by about 1.5 seconds. And the next day on the back page of the NY Times Sports section I got a small headline for a short race report. In the adjacent column, with a similar sized headline, was Ralph Boston who was the star of a near track meet. What a joke. Pietsch "besting" one Olympian and getting the same sized headline as an all-time great. But... yer darn tootin' I still have the NY Times race clipping. 

Here is that clipping that Geoff describes.  Note that Ted Corbitt got a 2  minute head start here.

George - 

So I have a story about Oscar Moore.

I was in my third year as college coach at Union College in Schenectady...my discus/hammer thrower makes first D3nationals...I am sitting in the partially empty stands, essentially by myself watching the heats of the men's 800m, maybe five coaches nearby...Lincoln University was an HBCU college near Philly...they always had strong 400m runners and 4x4...800 heat goes off and the Lincoln kids crap the bed, one runs 155 and not sure if the other even broke 200...it was clear to all they had not met the qualifying standard of 152...remember back in the 80's there was usually no FAT and entry to meets was on a coach's word...the lone black coach starts talking out loud, to himself to the effect "how do we expect these young men to do the right thing when coaches do things like this?" (entering unqualified athletes)...I'm the newbie, I don't know who anybody is...we talk briefly, he introduces himself...when he said Oscar Moore I almost fell off my seat...there was such a certainty of purpose, the import of doing the right thing that I never forgot that...that is why I wrote a chapter, fictionalized, about him in Supernova, I even sent him a copy of the book years later.  

I am very much enjoying your daily WC posts...Russ Ebbets

Correction? You mentioned my Oscar .Moore story and one from Mike Tymn but all I saw was one from Russ Ebbets. in which he mentions using his real encounter with Oscar Moore as the basis for one of his stories in Supernova. It is a wonderful story. I actually used to xerox it and one other to give to the kids on my teams. If you haven't read Supernova I highly recommend it.   

My mistake saying it was from Mike Tymn, it was from Russ Ebbets.    George