From Walt Murphy. Shared with permission (with minor editing from Fan Hub admin). Walt produces an info-rich daily ”This Day in T&F” newsletter. Contact him at waltmurphy44@gmail.com if you’d like to join his distribution list.
The Setting: The U.S. Indoor Championships, 61 years ago in 1962, in front of 16,864 fans in Madison Square Garden.
Jim Beatty, the defending champion, won the mile in a Madison Square Garden record of 4:00.2.
But, there was a sub-plot. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words. However, there are occasions when a picture doesn’t tell the whole story.
Check out the photo that appeared on the front page of the NY Times sports section the next day (see below). One look at it and you’d swear that Villanova freshman Tom Sullivan had just pulled off the biggest upset of the indoor season by beating Beatty!
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/02/25/113420127.html?pageNumber=188
Tom Sullivan, who had set a U.S. High School Outdoor record of 4:03.5 in 1961, explains:
“I was put into the mile as a last minute chance for Jumbo (Elliott) to score points for the Nova team (they would win the team title over the NYAC). I had just run a 1000y heat earlier in the evening but fell on the first lap and rolled over, got up and the pack was a good half lap ahead of me. Jumbo always stands at the bottom of the final turn and as I passed, I saw him wildly waving his arms at me. I thought he was yelling for me to catch them and qualify for the points he needed. Each time I passed I saw him waving and screaming at me. I caught the back of the pack but failed to qualify.
When I saw Jumbo, he was angry at me. He said he was trying to tell me to drop out, drop out. He wanted to use me in the mile (which he had entered me in when he sent in the entries of our team). He asked if I felt good enough to try the mile which was about 3 hours away. What could I say. By race time, I was not fit to run a fast mile mentally and physically.
I looked over my shoulder as I went into the last turn with one lap to go and see Beatty behind me and my pride said: ‘Tom, you can’t be lapped-how humiliating’, and I picked it up down the straightaway and saw the officials waving at me to move to the wall but there was no room at the wall which was filled with timers and judges. I ran past them and I believe they tried to raise the finish line over my head and then dropped it to let Beatty break the tape as he was only a few seconds behind me. I finished and don’t remember anyone in front of me as I went across the finish line.
If you can see the New York Times Sunday Sport Page there is a picture of me breaking the tape with Jim Beatty just a few feet behind me with the headline: “And the last shall be first”. Humbling race on the front cover of the NYTimes Sports page! They said in the newspapers that Jim Beatty ran his last lap all alone but I know he had me in his sights and I was his “rabbit” in that last lap.
I have given that picture in the NYT to my two daughters and four grandchildren and told them: ‘Sometimes you win, and sometimes it is not your day or time and lose in a big way. You move on and run your best you can in your next competition.’
