The Answer Man

By his own admission, Californian Clifford Rue, 30, used to be a monumental bore. He was the kind of sports fan who never could wait for the morning papers, spent half his time on the telephone badgering newspaper editors for up-to-the-minute dope. "Look," said a harassed sportswriter when Rue called him once too often, "we can't afford to take time off to give people running accounts of every cursing fight and ball game. We wouldn't have time to do anything else."

Ex-Marine Rue was far from chastened. The complaint convinced him that the city must be full of other impatient sports fans, all just as irritating as he. A little research uncovered the astonishing fact that Los Angeles newspapers, radio and TV stations, public libraries and universities got an average of 30,000 Rue-type requests every day.

In short order, Cliff Rue (a salesman at his father's liquor store) talked four friends into ponying up $40,000 to start a service called Sports Information Results. The police tapped his wires for weeks before they were satisfied that the 50 phone lines Rue wanted to put to work were not the sinews of a bookie joint.

Whisky & Courtesy. Today, after four months in business, Sports Information answers 18,000 calls a day; 17 researchers (all but two are paraplegics) field every question thrown at them. The office (Webster 8-3311) looks like a busy horse parlor, but its huge blackboard reflects more than track results: data on the big-time sports events are entered on the board, giving researchers the results at a glance. For the offbeat queries S.I.R. subscribes to a wire service and burrows through stacks of dog-eared reference books.

Once in a while, stymied by a tough question, researchers have to take down a name and address and mail the information later, but most requests get a quick response (one to ten minutes). S.I.R. makes a handsome profit from recorded advertisements that are played over the phone before each answer. Such varied clients as the Hollywood State Bank, the Los Angeles Examiner and a Las Vegas gambling casino advertise through S.I.R. But the biggest buyers of all are liquor companies. More often than not, the fan who calls the service will hear: "Here is your answer, courtesy of . Ask

for the whisky of elegance . . . The St. Louis Cardinals won the 1934 World Series four games to three."

Manhattan Prospects. Ruefully, Rue admits that most of his calls are for current race results, but any day is sure to bring other momentous questions. What was the largest football score ever run up? (In 1916 Cumberland University lost to Georgia Tech 222-0.)* What was the largest crowd ever to watch a water polo game? (In 1932 10,000 at the Los Angeles Olympic games.) S.I.R. will answer any reasonable query, but once refused to give Pro Wrestler Lord Carlton's address to an irate female fan who wanted to take him apart after watching him on TV.

S.I.R. expects a yearly gross of $250,000, is going so well that Rue is now planning a 200-phone service in Manhattan.

* A game in which garrulous George Allen, Franklin Roosevelt's political handyman, Harry Truman's White House jester and Dwight Eisenhower's golf companion, was Cumberland's captain. As George tells it, he made Cumberland's best run: "I only lost six yards."

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