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SCORECARD
THE ALL-STARS
On the premisethat we can make as many mistakes as the ballplayers, and are no lesschauvinistic, it is our custom to anticipate the vote of the National andAmerican League All-Star teams. Their annual game will be played July 9 inCleveland. We go the players a few steps better, selecting for each leaguethree pitchers, plus a relief pitcher, and then, pressing on to the end, abatting order:
AMERICANLEAGUE
Albie Pearson,Los Angeles, CF
Nelson Fox, Chicago, 2B
Leon Wagner, Los Angeles, LF
Al Kaline, Detroit, RF
Frank Malzone, Boston, 3B
Joe Pepitone, New York, 1B
Earl Battey, Minnesota, C
Zoilo Versalles, Minnesota, SS
Steve Barber, Baltimore, P
Camilo Pascual, Minnesota, P
Whitey Ford, New York, P
Dick Radatz, Boston, RP
NATIONALLEAGUE
Vada Pinson,Cincinnati, CF
Dick Groat, St. Louis, SS
Tommy Davis, Los Angeles, LF
Henry Aaron, Milwaukee, RF
Bill White, St. Louis, 1B
Ed Bailey, San Francisco, C
Ken Boyer, St. Louis, 3B
Bill Mazeroski, Pittsburgh, 2B
Sandy Koufax, Los Angeles, P
Juan Marichal, San Francisco, P
Jim O'Toole, Cincinnati, P
Al McBean, Pittsburgh, RP
GLASS WAR
Plenty of noisehas been made about the unesthetic quality of a countryside littered with cans,papers, bottles and ' old shoes, but there is growing evidence that the glassamong such refuse may be not just a mess but a menace. Clear glass, andparticularly clear glass bottles containing a residue of clear liquid, canconcentrate the sun's rays and, in a dry area, start fires. Bottles, jugs and,provocatively, goldfish bowls, have been known to establish blazes.
Bert L. Cole,Commissioner of the State of Washington Department of Natural Resources,recalls a time bomb in the form of a clear glass jug of gasoline left in thesun in the back of a truck. The sun, shining through the jug, set fire to a boxin the truck; the heat cracked the jug, and the blaze roared out over 19,000acres before it was put down. Less spectacularly, the goldfish bowl sat infront of a lady's dining-room window. She seemed to smell smoke every day, butcould find nothing until finally she noticed small, burned semicircles on thedining-room table. Elsewhere, tents have caught fire from Silex coffee-makersand brush fires have been ignited by water jugs. Obviously, discarded glassneeds to be recognized as a serious threat to woodlands. Clear glass, that is.Experimenters have been unable to start a fire with the darker glass of beerbottles, which does not suggest anything to water drinkers and pop guzzlersexcept to be less smug and more tidy.
WHACKS ANDWAVES
The propaganda of college football publicists is hard to come by in the summer.They are pressed into issuing accounts of how this player or that is makinghimself more formful, more formidable on summer jobs that practically smell ofmuscle. Vanderbilt University may be pardoned, therefore, if it goes onlyhalfway with its summer report on Randy Wieser, a 6-foot-1, 205-pound center.Randy will take six weeks' training in the Marine Corps at Quantico, Va. Thenhe will go home to Dallas and work in his father's beauty parlor as ahairdresser.
CAN'T STOPPITCHING
The box score in a baseball game at Huntsville, Texas, last week showed thewinning pitcher to be Elijah (Scottie) Walker, who pitched a five-hit shutoutand batted in two of his team's four runs. What the box score did not revealwas that Walker is 68 years old. He started in professional baseball in 1914with the Memphis Red Sox, a barnstorming Negro team, and says he once playedwith Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson on the Kansas City Monarchs. For the last 21years, however, Walker has been getting nowhere with his pitching, being aresident member of the Texas Department of Corrections (state prison)team. Theoldest winning pitcher in captivity is serving a life sentence for murder.
THOUGHT HE'D DROPIN
It is the commuter's belief that the end of the world will come in one crashingbig traffic jam. Vic Bastien of Tulsa believes this and has, he says, sufferedhis last red light, gulped his last exhaust fume. Vic used to spend 30 minutesinching along to his job as program director for KOME radio. He now rentsairplane space and parachutes to the studio. Hang the expense, says Vic, it's15 minutes closer. Besides, every time he gets into harness he's heading for anew world record for diving to work. To date he has fallen 11 miles to KOME.Each day announcers at the station walk through a cow pasture—carefully,carefully—to shoo away the cattle so the drop zone will be clear. The onlyobstacles then, says Bastien, are 500 trees, spectators' cars, a busy highway,inquisitive hawks, four transmitter towers (each 290 feet high), barbed wire,genuine fertilizer and poison ivy. Bastien says coming down "is like tryingto play shuffleboard with a fried egg." But it beats traffic, he says.
HOW TO SECEDE
Last week theWall Street Journal put out an ad whose purpose was to tempt more advertisersto spend money in the Wall Street Journal. There was a huge photograph ofDodger Shortstop Maury Wills coming up from a hard slide, and below the picturetwo lines of bold type that said:
Maury Willsdid.
Business men should.
Well now, thereis the kind of frankness we like. As baseball fans on the Wall Street Journaland elsewhere know, last year Maury Wills set a new record for stealing. Hestole more than 100 times in the season, the duration of which coincides quiteclosely with the second-and third-quarter fiscal business intervals. And whatwas even more impressive from both the baseball and businessman's point of viewwas that he rarely got caught. What the Wall Street Journal's ad went on to saywas this: "The Dodger star hit a gratifying .299 last year. But heconverted a merely good season into a stand-out season by seizing everyopportunity to advance after getting on first base."
Well, gentlemen,the call is clear. This first quarter of the year has been good—about a .299quarter, we'd say. So take a good, long lead, and if the Securities andExchange Commission goes into a long windup, break for second, or even third.However, we don't know quite what to recommend about home—which we alwaysthought of as Brazil. But since Eddie Gilbert got caught in a rundown, we wouldsay: be careful.
TENNIS, WITHFEELING
Pancho Gonzalez,once the world's best tennis player, and Tony Trabert, head of the touringpros, are being rude to each other with a consistency reminiscent of Gonzalez'sulking feuds with old pro king Jack Kramer. Gonzalez dropped out of seriouscompetition two years ago, but he is back fighting now because now there ismore to fight about: more money. Like a girl just shorn of her pigtails, protennis is suddenly coming up roses. This season Trabert got sponsors forseveral lush tournaments. He also got rights to a profitable television series.Then he found that Gonzalez had wildcatted for a $35,000 TV contract with hisbrother-in-law, Tom Tannenbaum, and had persuaded Pancho Segura to sign up,too. Trabert promptly suspended both players from the InternationalProfessional Tennis Players Association, making them ineligible for the IPTPAtournament held recently in Los Angeles.
But Trabert rulesa limited monarchy. He could not keep the renegade Panchos out of this week'sbig pro match at Forest Hills, because they signed separate contracts with thesponsoring Wildon Productions, Inc., which really couldn't care less aboutharmony. To further Trabert's discomfort, Gonzalez filed a $150,000 antitrustsuit against him and several other pros and the IPTPA itself. By suspendingGonzalez, they are "making fools of themselves", said Gonzalez."Nice fella," said Trabert.
Thus embroiled,the pros go to Forest Hills this week. All of them will play, includingprotagonists Trabert and Gonzalez. The prospects are delicious for a turbulenttournament. "At least it's safe to say," said Trabert, "that thereis going to be a little feeling."
TOO MUCHLIABILITY
Most states have long been enforcing laws that nobody wants, and nowConnecticut wants a law that nobody can enforce. Connecticut State Police havebeen pushing a bill, the first of its kind, requiring that auto racetrackscarry complete liability insurance to cover everybody: racers, employees,spectators, management and agents. The police had in fact pushed it rightthrough the legislature to Governor John Dempsey's desk for the signature thatwould have made it effective October 1, when State Police Major Carroll Shawrequested a halt. He had discovered that not one insurance company in the U.S.would write such a policy.
BREAK UP THETROJANS?
It was news lastweek when Oklahoma State's golf team won the NCAA championship, news because:1) Houston did not win; 2) Southern California did not win. Houston, of course,is the perennial golf champion—six team titles in seven years, five individualtitles out of six. But no one from Houston even made the semifinals this year.In the finals, R. H. Sikes of Arkansas, who wears sideburns, beat John Lotz ofSan Jose State,. who wore faded Bermudas and a flapping shirttail and cleanedhis ball by plopping it into his mouth.
Southern Cal, onthe other hand, has simply started to win everything. The Trojans won fourofficial NCAA titles this year—swimming, baseball, track (SI, June 24), andtennis—and were a unanimous, if unofficial, choice as national football champs.No other school ever won so many championships in one year, and no other schoolpresident should be prouder than Dr. Norman Topping, who rattled USC alumni byraising entrance requirements to giddy heights after he took, over five yearsago. Dr. Topping insisted that USC would have "excellence in athletics"only if there was "excellence throughout the university." Excellencehas come to USC, in toto and in spades.
FIRE THEHANDICAPPED
When the Tigers win three games in a row Detroit talks pennant, and when theylose three in a row the manager gets fired. Detroit has had 10 managers in 12years in pursuing this outlandish course. The new man on the job is ChuckDressen, who has been everybody's favorite sparkplug for years, and has himselfbeen replaced as often as one (he has managed five clubs without brilliance).Why did Detroit fire Bob Scheffing? The usual reasons. Sluggers Colavito andCash weren't slugging, and Pitchers Aguirre, Bunning and Mossi weren't pitching(Frank Lary is in Knoxville, for crying out loud), and Jake Wood was runningthe bases like he was mystified by their sequence. Obviously, under thosecircumstances, Manager Scheffing couldn't believe the romance coming out of thefront office ("Scheffing's job is absolutely safe"), because obviously,too, you can't fire Colavito, Cash or Bunning for being lousy. They have toplay. So the Tigers not only fired Scheffing, they fired his coaching staff aswell, and it was rumored all the way to Texas and back that the trainer andclubhouse boy would be next. "Too bad," said Houston Manager HarryCraft. "I heard the clubhouse boy was having a great year."
THEY SAID IT
•Clemson's Frank Howard, at a Florida State Universitycoaches' clinic that included Maryland's Tom Nugent, no friend of Howard's:"Somebody walked up to me and asked how many great coaches I thought werehere for the clinic. I told him, 'One less than Tom Nugent thinks there is.'"
•Sportscaster Lindsey Nelson, in describing DukeSnider's 400th home run: "It's another record for the Duke! He's the firstplayer ever to hit his 400th home run on color television!"
ILLUSTRATION
