Events & Discoveries

The team Lutsk had shellacked was not even Dynamo's second unit, as they subsequently, and more circumspectly, billed themselves, but a troupe of inept impostors who toured Soviet tank towns last summer blithely taking their lumps while two beguiling Muscovite Barnums, Comrades Barannikov and Morozov, turned a fast ruble and enjoyed the fruits of free and easy enterprise.

Their biggest, boldest and final hornswoggle was pulled off in distant Ashkhabad, capital of Turkmenia in central Asia. First, Comrade Barannikov called the Ashkhabad sports organization and said he was prepared to send Dynamo's second team out for a series of matches. The Ashkhabadians readily swallowed the bait, so Barannikov wired: STICK UP YOUR ANNOUNCEMENTS. WE ARE ENPLANING. ARRANGE THREE ADDITIONAL MATCHES. CONFIRM. FEE 35,000 RUBLES CASH. [SIGNED] CHAIRMAN DAVYDOV. This telegram rather puzzled the sports organization, for they knew that Dynamo's chairman was not Davydov but one Burov and his deputy was one Semichastny. They wired Burov at Dynamo headquarters for confirmation. Back came the reply: OUR SECOND PLAYERS VACATIONING. PLEASE ADVISE NAMES OF THOSE WHO MADE YOU OFFER. [SIGNED] SEMICHASTNY. The Ashkhabad officials had not recovered from their bewilderment when another wire arrived, also signed Semichastny: AUTHORIZED DEPARTURE. BARANNIKOV WILL REPRESENT. ARRANGE TWO MORE MATCHES. CASH TERMS. It was followed by a long-distance call from Barannikov, asking for telegraphic confirmation that his latest proposal had been accepted. The gullible Ashkhabadians promptly wired back their acceptance, addressing the message to Semichastny at Dynamo headquarters. Semichastny curtly replied: NO SOCCER MATCHES PROPOSED TO ANYONE. CANNOT SEND TEAM.

Although the Ashkhabadians now realized that they were dealing with two separate Semichastnys, incomprehensibly they asked no questions when Barannikov and his team stepped off a TU-104 jet from Moscow a few hours later. The "Dynamos" promptly lost their first match to a very minor team. "Our players are out of form," apologized Barannikov as he collected 8,000 rubles, cash. In the next game, the pretenders managed to hold the Ashkhabad champions to a tie, but on the following day, to the great amusement of the local press, were roundly thrashed by a collective farm team.

But not to the delight of Komsomolskaya Pravda's crusading reporters who smelled a capitalistic rat or two and ferreted out the facts. They said the mastermind was Comrade Morozov, whose disingenuous gimmick was that he had the same surname as an oldtime soccer star, Nikolai Morozov. Posing as Nikolai, he managed to get a pipeline into the Dynamo sports society and, thus equipped, operated by phone and wire out of his flat on a Moscow sidestreet while Barannikov recruited the players. Of punishment for the deception Komsomolskaya Pravda spoke no word, merely called for intensified watchfulness by the sports associations of all the Lutsks and Ashkhabads.

But to appreciate both the astonishing success of the bamboozle and the astonishing risk, hear this: Dynamo is the sports society of the Soviet secret police.

His Timing Is Off

He has a Sunday punch, you know,
That's powerful and tidy.
He never gets to use it, though,
Because he fights on Friday.
—RICHARD ARMOUR