Sport: Big Fight

Warm breezes drifted in from the nearby ocean. Hot air arose in the press. A mellow Florida moon lurked behind drifting clouds. Forty thousand men and women in a bowl of raw yellow pine—the Greeks knew how to do these things much better—looked not at the elusive moon but at a garish cone of artificial light in the bowl's bottom.

"Oh, it's a great party," said Radio Announcer Graham McNamee into his microphone.

Look where you might, you saw people whom lots of people say they know—Rex Ellingwood Beach, who writes; Ray Long, who edits;...