`NEVER QUIT, KID,' LONG-AGO WELTERWEIGHT SAID; CHAMP'S ADVICE HELPED YOUTH OUTSIDE RING.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

The kid was boxing Golden Gloves out of the Boys Brotherhood Republic Gym in Chicago back in the early '30s when the champ walked in one day.

``Show me your moves, kid,'' said Barney Ross, the welterweight champion of the world.

The kid nervously threw a couple of left hooks and right crosses, but his heart wasn't in it. He had other, more important things on his mind.

He had a story to tell the champ, he said - a story he never thought he'd get an opportunity to tell in person to the man who saved his life.

The champ didn't know it, the kid said, but he was like a god to him. The kid devoured every round of every fight in the newspapers that the champ ever fought - felt the elation of every victory, the pain of the rare defeat.

He lived on the West Side, too, the kid said. Oh, not farther north in a better-class neighborhood like Douglas Park, where the champ came from, but pretty close.

He walked some of the same streets in their neighborhoods that the champ did, and felt like he knew him, even if he didn't - not really, the kid said.

Anyway, he had just turned 15, and one night he was taking a shortcut across a field to see the champ fight in the main event over at an outdoor arena on the West Side, the kid said.

``As I neared the stadium, there were some railroad tracks. I couldn't hear or see a train coming, so I started across them.

``What I didn't realize was that this railroad had a third rail which was used to power the trains that ran on it,'' the kid said. ``When my foot landed on the third rail, it locked on like a vise.

``I tried to jump off, but it was impossible, Champ. I couldn't move it. I saw my whole life passing before me, and thought how devastated my beloved mother was gonna be at my demise.

``I prayed that a train wouldn't come, but I could hear one approaching, Champ. I was scared. I thought I was a goner.

``Then, suddenly, your face appears in front of me. You're telling me not to quit, to keep trying. `C'mon, kid, tug, pull

' you're yelling at me.

``So, I kept pulling and yanking, Champ, listening to that train getting closer. And finally, with one mighty tug, I broke loose and stumbled across the tracks.

``I fell down on the ground and wept with joy, Champ,'' the kid said. ``When I got up, I made a beeline for the stadium and saw you score a knockout in the third round.

``That's it, Champ, the story on how you saved my life,'' the kid said.

It's been more than 65 years now, but Irv Lander still sees the look in Barney Ross' eyes when he finished telling the champ his story.

``He smiled as if he knew the secret we shared, and then generously offered to give me some pointers - how to jab effectively, and how to throw a double left hook, one punch following another instantly, with devastating effect,'' Irv says.

``As he left the gym that day, he repeated his advice to me. `Never quit, kid,' he said.

``I never have,'' Irv Lander says.

The kid's pushing 80 now, pushing it out on the streets of the San Fernando Valley, handing out advice from another generation to kids who never heard of Barney Ross or another champion Irv got to meet along the way.

Another champion offering solid-gold advice to any generation of kids.

For a couple of years during his long career running an advertising agency, Irv served on the board of directors of the Sugar Ray Robinson Youth Foundation.

``I got to meet Sugar Ray after his boxing career was over, and things weren't going so well for him,'' Irv said. ``I asked him, `Champ, how you doing?' He looked at me and said, `I'm hanging in there.'

``Hanging in there. I've always remembered that, and say it myself now when people ask me how I'm doing. Sugar Ray didn't whine, didn't complain. He took every punch life threw at him like a man. Hanging in there.''

And now, as he sits in his Encino office preparing to kick off another round of the World Canine Frisbee Championships, which he co-founded, Irv Lander continues to hang in there.

He reminisces about his life as a kid on the West Side of Chicago, and a couple of champions he met along the way who offered solid-gold advice for every generation of kids.

Not ``Show me the money.'' Hang in there. Never quit, kid.