pronematch.com

by Hap Rocketto

I married into a Rhode Island family that is loaded with male sports fans. Baseball, basketball, football, soccer, golf, hockey, tennis, lacrosse; you name it and their huge plasma TVs blare it forth almost 24 hours a day on one of the dozens of sports channels to which they subscribe. Most family events see them gathered in little clusters discussing the team or individual performance of the sport de jour. Except during baseball season I am usually on the outside looking in because baseball is my favorite; read that as the only, professional sport I follow.

America’s Cup racing was also on my watch list until they discarded the 12 meter yacht, and Dennis Connor sailed a catamaran in 1988, with the excessive commercialization that followed.

Although shooting is my passion, I also have the guilty pleasure of playing in the Westerly Adult Kickball League. My cousins by the dozens participate sporadically in golf, old man’s basketball, and softball at the local Y, but I am pretty sure that it is really just an excuse to get out of the house and have a frosty one with some old buddies, and there is nothing wrong with that.

That being said an unusual set of circumstances has led me to watch some collegiate basketball. My daughter Leah is a student at Syracuse University and during her freshman year the cousins suggested we visit Leah, because they are fond of her. But that didn’t mean I didn’t suspect that there was an ulterior motive, because they also said while we were there we might as well take in a basketball game. Knowing little of the sport, I didn’t realize that ‘Cuse has a nationally ranked team. Each year since, the cousins have picked out a weekend that happens to coincide with a significant Big East Conference game. One was a game against Villanova which turned out to set the record for the largest crowd for an on-campus college basketball game in NCAA history. I sat in the Carrier Dome, along with my cousins and daughter, to bring the total paid attendance to 34,616.

As I said I know little about the sport except that it was invented by Doctor James Naismith of Springfield College as a way to keep his gym classes productive when forced inside during inclement weather. From the comments I hear made by my cousins while watching the game with them I surmise that there is something more complex going on upon the hard wood floor than ten tall sweaty guys running up and down the court tossing a ball into a hoop. I just can’t see it.

The cousins would have me think that basketball is a tough sport, because, I as I said earlier, they are all now relegated to local level slow break competition. They have no idea of the level of competition at which I participate and that is why I know shooting is tougher than basketball. Come on, just how difficult is it for five tall guys to help each other to toss big ball into a basket? Granted basketball is more physically demanding than shooting a rifle but I think that blasting a quarter size groups into the center of the target at 100 yards all by yourself is a far more difficult task than working as a team to dunk a ball.

Therefore, in the style of late night talk show host David Letterman, I have constructed a list of ten reasons why rifle shooting is tougher than basketball.

10. When you get tired in basketball the coach just calls time out and replaces you with someone fresh. Not so in shooting.

9. When’s the last time a basketball player had to make a shot with the sun in his eyes?

8. How often does a basketball player have a perfectly good shot blown out by the wind?

7. If a basketball player places a shot a little higher than intended, no problem. The backboard causes the ball to bounce into the basket. No such luck in shooting.

6. Rifle matches commonly run all day. When was the last time you saw a basketball game run more than an hour or so?

5. If you’re not making your shots in basketball, you can just pass the ball to someone who is hot. No such convenience in shooting.

4. Rifle bullets travel around the speed of sound, 300 meters per second. Basketballs top out at around 15 meters per second.

3. A basketball player can shoot from anywhere on the court that is convenient and comfortable. All rifleman shoot from the same distance.

2. A basketball player may shoot as often as the opportunity arises and is not limited to the number of shots taken. A rifle match requires that each rifleman shoot the same number of record shots, if they shoot more then allowed then a penalty follows.

And the first reason why shooting is tougher than basket ball is if you miss a shot in basketball you, or a team mate, can just jump up, grab the ball, and try again. Try that in shooting.

The only real similarity between the two sports is that a competitor attempts to score points by shooting. In rifle it is through a hard hold and easy squeeze in prone, sitting, kneeling, and standing while in basketball it is via hook shots, jump shots, lay ups, or the dramatic, and ever crowd pleasing, slam dunk.

But I have come to like basketball in a way. It gives me a weekend of male conviviality with my cousins, of whom I am fond, and, most important of all, I get to spend some extra time with my daughter.

by Hap Rocketto

When I was a young lad working for my rich Uncle Sam on what seagoing folk called “The Gray Funnel Line”, we were never allowed out of doors with our heads uncovered. The only exception was attendance at divine services or, as in my case more often than not, Captain’s Mast where I tried to explain away my many minor military misdemeanors. Conversely, we were never allowed indoors “covered” unless we were “under arms.” At the very least that meant wearing an immaculate pistol belt with all of its brass fittings burnished to a mirror finish-symbolic of actually carrying a side arm or sword. Unless we under arms we never ever saluted indoors. Saluting uncovered and/or indoors is justly considered, by those who have worn the uniform of the sea services, an ill mannered and foppish affectation of the less refined land and air forces

Three decades later being under arms and covered is still a regular state of affairs. I always wear a hat when I shoot, be it outdoors or in the gallery. A hat is the one piece of shooting equipment that is both utilitarian as well as fun. Depending on style, color, or condition it reflects the wearer’s character and, with a tiny metal pin or two, modestly shows to the world that one is Distinguished or President’s Hundred.

As shooting gear has evolved so has the hat. Looking at contemporary woodcuts from the earliest days of the practitioners of the art of using culverin and “villainous saltpeter” one sees helmets or great floppy hats resplendent with feathers. The matchlock became the cutting edge firearm when men wore the capotain, a tall felt hat, with a medium brim and tapered crown usually black in color. When the first flintlocks came on the scene the men wore the hat associated with the Puritans, the Sugar Loaf, with its high crown and stiff brim. The flintlock outlasted the tricorn and bicorn hats while percussion arms and tall beaver stove pipe hats coexisted. Ironically the beaver pelts used in hat manufacture were gathered by men wearing low crowned broad brimmed felt hats. On occasion it might appear that a Mountain Man had a raccoon, prairie dog, or gopher curled up asleep upon his head. Those tough men also carried 50 caliber Hawken rifles and Green River knives so I am sure that few dared to mock those who donned this eccentric piece of head gear. By the time self contained cartridges became common men were wearing soft felt hats such as the Panama and the pork pie in both felt and straw.

In my collection of old Camp Perry team photos it is rare to see a man without a hat. The decades that were known as the Golden Age of Smallbore, the 20s through the 50s, seem also to be a golden age for hats. Staring back from the sepia toned panographic photo of the 1935 US Dewar Team are the 49 faces of rifleman long gone. A few of the greats stand uncovered. Looking back through steel rimmed spectacles is a young bareheaded Robert Hughes, the first person to win the Whistler Boy Trophy. Remington Arms’ Frank Kahrs, who wrote many an article for the American Rifleman under the nom d’plume of Al Blanco, is likewise hatless, as is the legendary purveyor of shooting supplies, Paddy O’Hare. A balding Bill Schweitzer bravely displays his bare pate to the Camp Perry sun.

However, most wear the ever-present snap brim fedora wear and carry the rifle of the day, the Winchester Model 52. Dave Carlson, the 1940 smallbore champion and master of the Winchester custom shop, wears a dark model with a pinched crown sitting squarely upon his head. A young mustachioed “Doc” Swanson, tie drawn snugly up, sports the same hat as Carlson but his is set at a jaunty angle with its crown sharply pinched and the brim impishly rolled up matching its wearer’s mischievous grin. With features as sharp as the cutters he used to make his famous barrels the 1929 champion, Eric Johnson, wears a pale fedora with a two inch wide dark hat band. A smiling “Turk” Samsoe, two times national champion, is crowned with a duplicate of Johnson’s hat and likewise is future NRA president and Randle Cup donor Thurman Randle. Homer Jacobs’ dark three piece suit, paisley handkerchief peeking out from the breast pocket, is elegantly set off by his white fedora, its right hand brim turned up and the rest raked down.

In total there are 23 fedoras, five 1911 campaign hats, four floppy “newsboy” caps-technically known as an eight quarter, two ‘Daisy Mae’ army fatigue caps, one cowboy hat, and one pith helmet. For what is worth 18 of these men are also wearing ties. More ties appear in this old Perry photo than were evident in the entire theater during the most recent smallbore awards ceremony.

Seventy years on, the Dewar Team of 2005 photo shows 43 individuals with 14 wearing the most universal item of United States millinery manufacture, the ubiquitous logo decorated baseball cap. The rest go bareheaded and everyone is wearing a T shirt, but for two men in collared shirts and two young ladies in tank tops. Even if the current US Dewar Team is less sartorially splendid then its predecessor they are, never the less, a match in the shooting talent department for the team counts four Olympians, a handful of national prone and position champions, as well as Pershing and Roberts Team veterans among its members.

While most of today’s shooters pose without headgear it is guaranteed that almost every one of them wears something when they shoot. It might be a ball cap, a visor, a “boonie” hat, a bonnet, a bandana tied buccaneer style, or a specially designed shooting cap with Velcro secured flaps but all, in their own way, honor the old Naval tradition of being covered when under arms.