Sport: The Great White Whale

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Alongside the practical physics belongs Parry's fierce concentration. He spends as much time just thinking about his shot as fondling it in the putting circle. Parry spent many of his nights alone in his ascetic bedroom, the lights dim. his weighty frame slack on the bed. From his tape recorder trickled the soothing sound of his own voice: "Keep low, keep back, keep your movement fast across the circle. Fast, now! Fast! Fast! And beat them! Beat them all!" Parry is convinced that this nocturnal rite adds inches to his tosses.

On the track field. Parry's carefully nurtured M.A. and P.A. blend inextricably into what irreverent teammates have been known to call "the vaudeville act of O'Brien and O'Brien." The show begins with Parry snarling around the track, sinking into what he calls his "competitive trance," beneath which lies the quick temper of a scalded hog. When the spirit moves him, he snatches up the shot in his left hand, licks the fingers of his right hand and rubs the saliva on the back of his neck. This is not superstition. The thin lamination of moisture is meant to keep the shot from clinging an instant too long to the side of Parry's neck, where it rests before a put.

Moving into a place in the ring, Parry hefts the shot in his right hand. Handling the heavy sphere as gently as a waiter balancing a tray of champagne, he raises his left hand as if he were conferring a blessing on the spectators. His blue eyes narrow, he inches his left foot back toward the center of the circle like a burglar feeling his way down off a porch roof in the dark. Suddenly he ducks low. His eyes squint almost shut, and with a furious burst of energy he scrapes his whole body in a whirling drive across the circle. The shot seems to explode from his hand to the sound of a monumental grunt. Fully three-quarters of Parry's body winds up leaning across the boundary of the ring, but his balance is so perfect that not for years has he spoiled a put by stepping over the edge.

And So They Were Married. Such absolute absorption in so remote, a skill leaves little time for making friends off the track. It was probably as much of a surprise to Parry as to anyone else when he looked up on his way to practice one day in November 1952 and spotted a pretty coed on the U.S.C. tennis courts. Caught off guard, he blurted out: "Lookit all them curves." Properly indignant, Sandra Cordrey told him to go put his shot. But the blunder evolved into romance, and next spring the pair were "pinned." Sandra soon got bored with playing second fiddle to a big iron BB. Often when they went on a date, the shot went along in its little plaid bag. En route to dinner or dance, Parry usually managed to pass a convenient field. He would park, peel off his shirt and get off a few practice tosses—lest the evening wind up a total loss. Finally Sandra got fed up and sent Parry packing. In January 1955> transformed into an Air Force lieutenant, he came back and proposed.

The marriage was arranged, rather vaguely, for some time after the 1955 Pan-American games in Mexico City. Parry figured on a decent waiting period for Mexican red tape. The day after the shot-put competition (which Parry won), the engaged pair went down to the Mexican hall of records to start the paper work.