The Press: The Sporting Life

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In its policy of getting along with the powers that be, Long Island's fabulously successful harness track, Roosevelt Raceway, would never dream of turning down an influential freebooter. Last year Roosevelt, from $17,831,522 in revenues, disbursed $699,391 for publicity, entertainment and advertising, including a trifling $104.02 in March to recompense a junketeer named "G. P. Miller" for bed, board and beverages at the Langford Hotel in Winter Park, Fla. Who was G. P. Miller? Last week the answer was splashed on the front page of the New York World-Telegram and Sun: "Miller" was none other than the state's Commissioner of Harness Racing, George P. Monaghan.

Weeks earlier, the World-Telegram had got a beat by reporting charges made against Monaghan's ethics by an official state investigating committee, and shortly every paper in town was baying at Monaghan's heels. Governor Nelson Rockefeller demanded Monaghan's resignation; it was not forthcoming. Long Island's Newsday (circ. 288,483), for good measure, indicted the tradition of letting even sportswriters ride hell-for-leather on the cuff: "This is a form of indirect bribery. A reporter who takes favors . . . has been bought." But while the front pages were angry, the sportswriters themselves stayed curiously silent.

Last week's publication by the World-Telegram of Roosevelt Raceway's March 1958 tab at the Langford Hotel helped explain the writers' reticence. Along with Monaghan and other race officials to the trotting trials in Florida had gone 13 New York sportswriters, including the Journal-American's Warren Pack, the New York Times's Frank M. Blunk, the World-Telegram's Bill Bloome, the Herald Tribune's Harry Carlin, Post Sports Editor Ike Gellis, and three men from Newsday. Together they put $6,807.86 on the Raceway's cuff at the Langford, accepted $5,000 or so for travel and incidentals.

In the embarrassed scramble that followed, the Herald Tribune's Sports Editor Stanley Woodward tried to laugh it off: "We have an established system of selecting the junketeer. We line up the whole staff and select the palest man." The World-Telegram lamely explained that "Mr. Bloome was on vacation." Said Newsday's Managing Editor Alan Hathway: "We're not at all embarrassed by this. But we're going to start with a clean slate all around."