By Fred Hawks- Nonpareil Sports Editor

A fellow who has been interested in athletics for as many years as Leslie "Leck" Vuagniaux has is bound to have experienced some major thrills along the way.

Vuagniaux, 128 Palmer Avenue, admits that the biggest thrills in his book was the day he shared sports page headlines with Jack Dempsey.

It was the day after the Manassa Mauler had chilled Georges Carpentier, the Frenchman.

The banner headline in a certain newspaper the following morning read: "Dempsey Wins by Kayo" Just below that, in considerably smaller type, an other headline read: "Vuagniaux Hits Hard."

Different Weapons

Vuagniaux did hit about as hard as Dempsey that particular day, although he was using a baseball bat instead of boxing gloves, and punishing horsehide instead of a human skull.

The Council Bluffs man did his clouting that afternoon in the interests of his Chicago & North Western baseball team against " Chappie’s" Maccabee Club. He clouted two triples and a double to help his mates win, 7 to 6. Always a good hitter, it could have been he was particularly hot that day because Manager Chapman of the opposing team had told him, on the eve of battle, "Leck, if you could hit I’d let you play on my club."

Boxing and baseball have long been Vuagniaux’s major sports interests. He was one of the prime factors in organization of a North Western shops ball team for play in a twilight league here in 1919. He and Vincent "Hucky" Francis comprised an interchangeable battery, one pitching when the other caught..

The North Western switchmen won the league pennant, and recruited both Vuagniaux and Francis for a bit of post-season play. "Leck" made his firs money out of baseball playing with that club in Denison. As he recalls it, each player’s share was $7.35. He played right field and his homer won the game, 3-2 for Eddie Ford, who had come of virtual retirement to pitch.

Although he was known as a hitter, "Leck" still chuckles about the way Lefty Powers fooled him one day while pitching Avoca to a 3-1 win over Bert Slack’s Ford Transfers. Lefty, he recalls, poured two strikes across with the speed of the wind, then as "Leck" shortened up the bat, the southpaw used the same identical motion to waft a ball that almost never did get up there. As" Leck" remembers it, he had gone all the way around before the pellet thumped into the catcher’s mitt.

Vuagniaux didn’t take up pitching seriously until 1920, when he developed a knuckle ball that was almost as much a puzzle to him as to opposing batsmen. He never knew which way it was going to break. Neither did the hitter. Had he ever learned to control this pitch, it would have been a dazzler. As it was, he’d ordinarily issue from six to eight walks in a seven inning fame, and as a result might pitch a no-hitter or a one-hitter and still lose by some score like 3-2.

Played at Boone

He went to Boone from Council Bluffs as a machinist’s apprentice and played with Boone independents through 1932, appearing at first base or in the outfield and always batting clean up.

During part of one of those seasons, he was with an all salaried club at Stanhope, cinching his job by clouting a pinch triple with the bases loaded his first game. He was "fired" by an irate manager, along with several teammates; after the club had dropped a 10-0 winner take all game to Ames.

"Leck" likes to help young ball players just as likes to aid young boxers as will presently appear. The Council Bluffs Boosters are the lad in whom he’s most interested right now, because his son is one of them.

As for his baseball theories, he’s thoroughly sold on the advantages of choke hitting. A team of good choke hitters, he’s convinced, will always mean a winning ball club. He admonishes youngsters in the game: heed the advice of old timers who have played the game before you. Above all, listen toe your manager or coach."

Vuagniaux became interested in boxing before leaving Council Bluffs for Boone. Se started out as a human punching bag for Royal Coffman, shortly before the latter won the Midwest AAU welterweight title and went on to the Paris Olympics in 1924.

"Leck" decided it would be pleasant to be hit less frequently, so he made a deeper study of the game and by the time he went to Boone was a pretty fair mitt slinger.

Boxing Instructor

Good enough, in fact, to be offered the post of boxing instructor at the Boone YMCA, which he accepted with reluctance. Good enough also to be offered a chance to turn pro and meet Kenneth Hunt, who was claiming the light heavyweight championship of Iowa at that time on the strength of 33 straight victories. "Leck" turned that offer down.

He was in charge of the Northwestern railway boxing team at Boone for some time, and also took a young Boone middleweight named Glen Forester under this wind, turned him form a consistent loser into a boy who won three straight before and arm injury forced his retirement.

As a gang foreman in C.C.C. camps at Boone and Ames starting in 1933, Vuagniaux found himself still affiliated with boxing, under orders from the camp commander, one Maj. Meyers who was a sportsman of the first water.

Major Myers was determined to stage a boxing show had to find somebody to arrange the details and simply told Vuagniaux he was "it." Vuagniaux supervised the building of a regulation ring, promoted a successful show, for all of which he received five bucks, a personal gift from the major.

"Leck" always had at heart the interests of the fighters with whom he worked. On more than one occasion he tried, but unsuccessfully, to prevent bouts in which he knew one boy to be overmatched.

Bowling is one of his present sports interests, and he gives that game a great deal of credit for the fact that his weight hasn’t varied much since he was in his twenties, and for the absence of a middle-aged waist line.

He’s been bowling four years in the Merchants and Industrial leagues here. Last winter he hiked his average from 165 to 175, and he’d like, ultimately, to roll in the Gate Cities classic, He’s played considerable golf but never was able to get into the low eighties bracket.

He’s an ardent fisherman too. Hunting? Well, should attempts to locate him anywhere else during some of his off hours fail, he admits that, if the season happened to be right, the person seeking him could hardly do better that touring the duck blinds.

His biggest thrills in the hunting line included bagging three Canadian geese on the Des Moines river in 1929, and getting plenty of mallards off a lake at Missouri and St Louis gravel pit near Grand Junction which the majority of that areas huntsmen deemed unworthy of their time and talents.

"Leck" two sons are fitted through temperament and inclination to afford him year around companionship on the sports and athletics side. Leslie, junior, 22 likes baseball and basketball. Warren, 21, is an enthusiastic hunter and fisherman. Both boys served 45 months together in the navy, joining together. Leslie, Jr. served in Honolulu defense zone as a crash boat pilot and played baseball with Pan-American airways. Warren served in the North Atlantic, South Atlantic and Caribbean theaters.

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