SI Vault Bil Gilbert May 07, 1979 Figure filbert Frank Zarnowski
serves as historian and mother hen to the ofttimes neglected
decathlon corps Decrease font Decrease font Enlarge font Enlarge
font May 07, 1979  He's Every Inch A Decathnut   View CoverRead
All Articles View This Issue  Any sport that lays even shaky
claim to being an organized one has a secretariat: that is, a
cadre of arrangers concerned with who plays when and where; with
drumming up crowds to watch; with reporting what happened; with
testifying to and preserving records for posterity; and with
what has come to be called promotion. Often the members of a
secretariat outnumber the contestants, and they tend to multiply
rapidly. For example, there are fewer professional baseball
players than there were 50 years ago, but many more front-office
operatives, flacks, advertising persons, lawyers and scoreboard
mechanics, and today there are agents, hypnotists, color
commentators and Free-Bat/Wet-T-Shirt specialists as well. The
growth of a sport can