PEOPLE

"Mudville," said Bo Belinsky, "needs a little action. Mamie will Christmas-tree up the place." Excitement spread through the Phillie clubhouse on gusts of freshly applied aftershave. Anticipation glistened from new layers of greasy kid stuff. Glamorous Mamie Van Doren was coming to Clearwater to root for ex-fiancé Bo. During batting practice several players waited near the gate Mamie was supposed to enter. No luck. Once the game began, shiny heads kept popping up out of the dugout; shiny eyes scanned the stands for Mamie. No Mamie. The Phillies, left at the altar in last year's pennant race, had been stood up again. Mamie sent word that the weather was too cold. The following day was overcast but mild. Again, no Mamie. "I wasn't feeling groovy," she explained. "This would never have happened," Catcher Gus Triandos told Belinsky, "if we had won the pennant."

After a trip well out of the snow belt, Gus Grissom knew just where he was headed. "What I want to do now," he said, "is go skiing."

In the recent French local elections the Gaullist headquarters at Marseille was bombed, there was a strike of poll clerks and a woman candidate attacked a retiring mayor with a ballot box. But these were only the more overt examples of oldtime Gallic politics. Another concerned Jean Vuarnet, Squaw Valley Olympic downhill champion in 1960 and now the sports director of the Savoyard resort of Morzine. He wasn't even running for office, yet 114 townspeople wrote in his name for mayor. It was their way of protesting the incumbent mayor's announced intention not to renew Vuarnet's contract. The three opposition parties then called upon Vuarnet to lead them in the runoff balloting. Vuarnet consented and won easily, thereby not only saving his job but also becoming mayor. The elections were, in fact, a landslide—or, rather, snowslide—for skiers. Robert Killy and Robert Goitschel, fathers of Jean-Claude and the sisters Marielle and Christine, respectively, also schussed into local office at Val d'Is√®re. Guy Périllat was elected town councilman while not even in France. His only campaign maneuver was to ski—and not particularly well—against the U.S. and Austria at Vail.

CBS Newscaster Robert Trout, a dedicated walker, recently was seen dogtrotting on a Manhattan avenue. Trout, it develops, has set a daily walking goal of five miles, or 100 New York City blocks. "Have to hurry," puffed Trout. "I'm 1,000 blocks behind my quota."

Not satisfied with his modest plan to ride the Kansas City Athletics' mule mascot from home to third on Opening Day (PEOPLE, Feb. 22), Owner Charles Finley has expanded his horizons. The gates of the bullpen—temporarily converted to a mulepen—will swing wide, and out will ride the nine members of the starting lineup, all on mules. Each player will ride to his position. Finley did not say whether the A's would dismount to play their positions. He did, however, say that he was serious about renaming the club the Missouri Mules.

Over the years, open woods and pasture around McLean, Va. have been turned into highways, shopping centers and subdivisions. As horseback riding areas disappeared, desperate young equestrians took to the grassy strip dividing traffic on the George Washington Parkway into the capital. Recently, however, the mare of one pretty rider was reined in by a Washington park policeman. "Sorry," said the cop, "but you can't ride horseback here." Saddened, the 12-year-old returned home. That night the girl reported her plight to her father, Stewart Udall, who had mixed feelings. As Secretary of the Interior, Udall wants to conserve the wide-open spaces, but he also heads the park police. Said Udall to the press, "The policeman did his duty. But after all, where could Lori ride but along the highway? I ask you, where?"

Ernie Terrell, the other world heavyweight boxing champion, has turned to rhythm and blues to express his sorrows. The WBA's answer to Cassius Clay made an appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight show, and then, shimmering in an indigo tux, played his first big nightclub with a relatively rocking and rolling trio at Chicago's Whisky A-Go Go. With sister Velma and brother J. C. (plus a second brother, Lenon, on bass), Terrell wailed, "You kissed me, then you walked away." The fighter did not seem exactly dedicated to his art. Afterward he said: "I'm in this for the money I'm not getting out of boxing. So far one is bad and the other is worse."

Famed Washington Trial Lawyer Edward Bennett Williams and Michigan Senator Philip A. Hart both have 12-year-old sons who attend the same private school in Leonardtown, Md. The other day the boys met in a school boxing match, and Mike Hart resoundingly knocked out Joby Williams. "I think the voters in Michigan ought to know," Williams senior wrote to Hart senior, "that you are hiding out a prospective white hope in Leonardtown, Md. and that your boxing bill is motivated entirely by nepotism."

Billed with a certain inexorable logic as Beauty and the Beef, Singer Jane Morgan and Pro Footballers Tommy McDonald, Jack Concannon, Ed Khayat and Jim Ringo (below) are knocking them dead at the Latin Casino in Camden, N.J. After a boffo opening in which Cowboy McDonald comes dancing out on his toes, carrying a rose in his teeth and tossing posies to the audience, the group launches into such current favorites as Sweet Adeline, Heart of My Heart and That Old Gang of Mine. They also attempt comedy routines: "I got so big because I don't smoke, drink or go around with women," says Khayat. "What do you do for kicks?" asks Jane. "I tell the biggest lies in the NFL," says Khayat.

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