• This entire feature article "Some Babes in the Woods" is also available in Acrobat pdf.
• Author's historical introduction
• Actual feature article as published
• Illustrations

            They share housing in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco. They are two of the biggest men in international track and field. Al Feuerbach at 6-1 and 242 pounds is the blond American shot-put champ. Mac Wilkins at 6-4 and 253 is the dark American 1976 Olympic gold medalist in the discus.

SEMI-TOUGH

            Like the hands-off straight trio in the Burt Reynolds-Kris Kristofferson-and-Jill Clayburgh movie Semi-Tough, Big Mac Wilkins lives under the same roof as Feuerbach and wife. Mrs. Feuerbach is a Swedish stewardess who officially lives in Stockholm, but who spends plenty of time with Mr. Feuerbach when she is not flying charters.

            The mountain hideaway is Thoreauvian in its spartan jock basics: a weight-training room, a shot-put area, and a concrete discus circle. It also has two bedrooms located at opposite ends of the house. “We like to point that out,” SI quotes the single, and sometimes heavily bearded, Big Mac.

DEDICATED ATHLETES

            Feuerbach and Wilkins seek little other than self-improvement. SI quotes: “The goal,” says Feuerbach, “is to gain as many feet and inches as I can possibly squeeze out of my body. The main concern is how well I can do, not how I compare to the rest to the world.” Says Wilkins, “My motivation is to throw the discus as far as I can, to come as close to my ultimate potential as possible... When I’ve got my throwing together, I’m competing against myself, because no one can beat me.”

THE TIME/LIFE OF YOUR LIFE

            Drummer always reviews media: movies, books and sometime magazines like Easy Riders’ special issue In the Wind, or The San Quentin News. We search out things our readers don’t want to miss. This time out, Drummer rolls its sticks in 4/4 time to Sports Illustrated for its July 3, 1978, issue, with its “Some Babes in the Woods” article excellently written by Joe Marshall and incredibly photographed in color by Rich Clarkson.

            This feature is reviewed at a full-tilt boogie 10 on a Scale of 10!

            To our macho readership, Drummer can only recommend that our progressive reviews of Sports Illustrated show that that Time/Life mag grows no-kidding better every issue. As gays show increasing interest in straight sports (and sex-preference be damned!), and after our own jock issue (Drummer 20), we highly recommend to the reader newly interested in sports that he pick up on, and even subscribe to, Sports Illustrated.

            SI isn’t any longer the Vatican Version of mens sana in corpore sano once sanctified by, for-god-sake remember, Bonnie Prudden and Clare Loose Booth, Henry Luce’s wife, and American Ambassador to the Vatican in Rome. SI now has attitude that athletic men can, without flinching, relate to.

©1978, 2003 Jack Fritscher