This is very much a challenge when writing about a wrestler of the past. After all, stats may be about all we have for a mat great who competed in the 1970s or '50s or '30s. Most of us have no personal recollections of seeing that wrestler in action. Photos are often hard to come by. Video or films can be even more difficult to find.
Yet I feel it's critically important to share the stories of these past greats that go beyond the stats ... to reinforce that these individuals were indeed real, and very human. Especially when I learn of individuals currently involved in wrestling who are clueless about the legends who paved their way.
In the past week or so, I've been thinking about the issue of getting beyond stats when describing any wrestler, past or present. I've been in a historical frame-of-mind because of the reopening earlier this month of the renovated the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma and their 40th Honors Weekend which welcomed the Class of 2016 honorees. It's so easy to think of the honorees as just names and statistics ... until you read their stories, see vintage photos and films of them in the glory days, and see them at the induction ceremony, as they look today.
During Honors Weekend, award-winning wrestling journalist Jason Bryant wrote something that helped put that in perspective for me.
"People like Bill Harlow [2016 Distinguished Member inductee who was 1966 NCAA champ for Oklahoma State] are now on hallowed ground. They need to be in the stories we tell our young wrestlers and fans of the sport," Bryant wrote on Facebook. "I knew very little about him and I'm a wrestling junkie. Every year, I come away from this weekend with a much greater understanding and respect for the sport I love so much because as I get older, I am starting to see what the sport itself did for those who came well before me."
Sadly, the life stories of past mat greats don't always culminate with an induction into the Hall of Fame. In some cases, they end tragically ... and, all too often, are pretty much unnoticed in death. Like the Cowboy ... and the Milkman.
The Cowboy, Dick Beattie
Dick Beattie was a two-time NCAA and Big Eight (now Big 12) wrestling champ for the Oklahoma State Cowboys in 1958 and 1959 at 157 pounds, compiling a 36-4-2 overall record, with five falls. Beattie also earned a place on the 1956 US Olympic freestyle team.
Dick BeattyNow, think of a more recent example of a wrestler who won two national and conference titles AND qualified for the Olympics ... and try to imagine that their death might go unreported in the wrestling media these days. It certainly could happen, but, right now, hard to conceive.
The Milkman, Rodger Snook
The Milkman was the nickname of Rodger Snook, member of the storied "Dream Team of 1947" at Cornell College of Iowa, the smallest school in history to win an NCAA team title. (This was long before today's NCAA Division I, II and III structure; tiny colleges like Cornell of Iowa -- with an enrollment of approximately 700 at the time -- went up against big schools such as Lehigh and University of Illinois.)
Rodger SnookPrior to the war, Snook wrestled at the 1941 AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) championships ... where he left a favorable impression on Cornell College head wrestling coach Paul Scott. Fast forward a few years. Immediately upon returning home, Snook wrestled at a tournament back east where he was, by his own admission, "a bit rusty." In the audience was coach Scott, who remembered Snook as he was before World War II. When the two reunited, Scott urged Snook to apply to his school in Iowa. As Scott is quoted in Arno Niemand's book "Dream Team of 1947", Snook's application beat the coach back home.
Rodger Snook was a key component in the success of the Cornell Purple wrestling team in its heyday. At the 1947 NCAAs -- the year his team took the title -- Snook made it to the 145-pound finals, only to lose to Bill Koll of Iowa State Teachers College (now Northern Iowa), who was named Outstanding Wrestler for the tournament, and is considered by a number of wrestling historians to be one of the all-time greats of college wrestling. Cornell College did not compete at the 1948 NCAAs ... but, two years later, Snook placed fourth in the 155-pound bracket at the 1949 NCAAs, to earn his second All-American honors. As a senior, Snook again placed fourth -- this time at 145 -- at the 1950 NCAAs, making him a three-time All-American. When he hung up his purple tights and white trunks at the end of his time as a Cornell College starter, Rodger Snook had compiled a 38-11 record, with 18 falls.
Paul Scott had assembled a great team consisting of fresh-out-of-high-school kids who wrestled with incredible poise ... along with older World War II vets like Rodger Snook, including some twenty-somethings who, unlike Snook, had not wrestled before the war. Some of these Cornell wrestlers -- kids and veterans -- went to win individual NCAA titles. Yet coach Scott considered Roger Snook to be his greatest recruiting achievement.
Snook graduated from Cornell College in 1950. Although a Jersey boy through and through, he had come to love the school and the area. He was able to secure a job as a recruiter for his college alma mater ... and even found a girl. They became engaged to be married.
Then, tragedy. A car driven by a priest, allegedly drunk, crossed the centerline on U.S. 6 near Iowa City, striking Snook's car head-on. The former wrestler was seriously injured, left paralyzed. He was forced to return to his parents' home for care. After a number of months, Snook decided he did not want to be a burden to his folks or his fiancé any longer ... so he took his life on March 17, 1956.
Fast-forward a half century. I was sitting in the Cole Library, a Post-Modern structure on the rolling, heavily-treed Cornell College campus, doing research on the school's 1947 "Dream Team" wrestling program for an InterMat Rewind feature.
I had just listened to an audio recording of the visiting Purple shutting out Lehigh in their home gym, and was now thumbing through old copies of the Royal Purple student yearbooks, The Cornellian newspaper, and other memorabilia of that era. I came across a news story that Rodger Snook had died in his parents' home in New Jersey ... including a response from a obviously heartbroken Paul Scott. It was so hard to reconcile this tragic news with the photos of a square-shouldered physical specimen with an intense expression etched onto his face in just about every photo ... the guy who wrestled for one of the top programs in the U.S. immediately after World War II ... and seemed to have an incredible life ahead of him.
It was like a punch in the gut to learn of the Milkman's death ... and its circumstances. (At the time of my research trip in 2007, most of the principal members of the 1947 Dream Team were still alive, having created successful careers in a number of realms, from teaching to the oil industry, over the course of their long lives.)
The point of all this is ... we fans get so wrapped up in results, in won-loss records, in pinning percentages, and other on-the-mat statistics. Or, nowadays, we focus on what kind of success wrestlers have had after hanging up their headgear, celebrating the guys who find success in MMA or WWE or the NFL ... or become titans of Wall Street ... or as politicians. We get caught up in the stuff of resumes, forgetting that these mat greats are indeed human ... and, at times, all too human.
It's important for institutions such as the National Wrestling Hall of Fame -- and individual wrestling historians chronicling the past, and wrestling journalists reporting on today's athletes -- to strive to do more than tell a by-the-numbers story for past mat greats, but to do our best to share the all-too-human side of these old-school athletes whenever possible. We owe it to guys like Dick Beattie and Rodger Snook, the Milkman.
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