Hinesight

How do you interview an Irishman who has never touched a drop, owns a castle in the "old country," and dines at the Union Oyster House every day?

Right; by chasing him around in the dark behind Soldiers' Field.

That's about the best shot I had at Jimmy Fair, a fiery Irish-born physical therapist who spends his afternoons patching up athletes at the Dillon Clinic.

Fair, who thrives on Sunday church and swordfish steak, is always in motion. He treats patients in his Boston office every morning, scurries from Harvard athlete to Harvard athlete between lunch and dinner, and then often finishes the day with evening house calls.

When I approached him last week in Dillon, he was sporting a fierce smile and was bandying chit-chat with passing football players. At the same time, he worked on a runner's injured legs as he danced from one side of the table to the other. After we exchanged a few pleasantries and a few needles, he questioned my physical prowess and then challenged me to jog with him that evening.

As we strode across the athletic fields a few hours later he criticized alternately my running style and the physical shape of Harvard football players.

"They pussyfoot around all summer, then come here and expect to get into shape under the naked eye of the human coach, then blame him for their failures," he began in his Irish brogue. "John Yovicsin is as fine a coach as any," he added. "It's the players themselves that are to blame. They're a bunch of pussyfooters."

Spinning quickly around on the balls of his feet-one of his favorite tricks. Fair assured me that most football players weren't in good enough shape to do the same.

"They'd be a hell of a lot better off if they'd quit horsing around with the girls and nourished their minds and bodies with more active endeavors than courting," he said while waving a finger in my face. "There's no place for them [girls] in society-at least during the college years, and Harvard students have got to watch out for the many girls on the prowl or they'll end up carrying the girls who were at first sitting on their laps," he added.

"Jogging properly" is the phrase I think of now when I think of Jim Fair. He used it repeatedly in our conversation, at one time to describe a way Harvard students could overcome "the tension that is so striking" to him as a foreigner, a few minutes later as a necessary condition for improving the mind, and at another time as a medical precaution.

He went on to tell me about some of his middle-aged patients, who are now "washed up because they let their bodies deteriorate when they were younger." He seemed to sadden as he said this, but he regained his chipperness when he began to tell me about the University-wide jogging program he hopes to start. Fair said that he's presented Robert B. Watson, Director of Athletics, with a plan to implement his dream.

"All I want to do," he said, "is do what I can for this country and this University. I want people to jog and I want them to jog right."