Tough Talker

Sam Baiter, commentator on The Inside of Sports, which plugs Phillies cigars over an MBS network, has standing instructions to address himself to an audience of truck drivers making $18 a week. He follows those instructions almost to the letter, describes his technique as being of the "Aw-nuts rather than the Gee-whiz school of sportswriting." In an excited baritone, he calls a bum a bum, takes frequent pot shots at athletic bigwigs, squeezes the last drop of melodrama out of horse racing, ball games, fights, wrestling bouts. His only concessions to the carriage trade are seasonal references to tennis, polo and college track meets. Enormously popular with sports addicts, he has been a big help in boosting the sale of Phillies, claimed to be over half a billion cigars a year, in keeping Bayuk Cigars Inc. of Philadelphia solidly in the black. Last week, at $36,400 annually, he began in Los Angeles his third consecutive year of sportscasting.

Now 30, Baiter is built like a bull, keeps in the pink by playing tennis, handball and squash, stars as a pitcher on the softball team of Los Angeles station KHJ. Four years ago, in his sporting prime, he was agile enough to make the Olympic basketball team. A onetime high-school teacher from U. C. L. A., Baiter wrote action stories for the pulps, treated scripts for Universal before he was wired for sound. Inspired to take to the air by a broadcast of Alexander Woollcott, he arranged his sportscasts in a pattern as intricate as that of the Town Crier, substituted whipcord for Woollcott's lace. His first sponsor was the proprietor of a chain of chili joints, whose clientele listened with stunned admiration to his high-class composition. From his chili sponsor Baiter got $10 a broadcast, zoomed into the big money within a year.

On the air, Baiter has vigorously belted all sorts of sporting figures around. Among others, he has walloped Avery Brundage, Dizzy Dean, Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Jockey Don Meade.

Constantly goading Baiter to put a sting into his punches is hard-boiled Neal Ivey of Philadelphia's Ivey & Ellington, which handles the Phillies account. Ivey, who signed up Baiter for Phillies, wires complaints when Baiter sounds soft. Sample of the stuff Ivey likes to hear: "How does horse racing get away with it? ... A horse comes in . . . among the also-rans in one race and in the very next he finishes so far ahead that he's through taking his shower before the place pony can even stagger home. Or vice versa. At least vice."

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