PEOPLE
After helping Princess Margaret preside over the opening of the Manx Tynwald (parliament to non-Manx), Lord Snowdon donned black leather jacket, crash helmet and steel-tipped racing boots (below) to try out the 37¾-mile Isle of Man motorcycle course. During his 45-minute circuit, Tony averaged 50 mph and topped 90 miles an hour on one straightaway. Margaret, asked whether she had been worried by her husband's ride, smiled and said. "No, but I would have been if I had known what speed he was going to do." Said Lord Snowdon (known to the British press as Ton-Up Tony, a slang expression for anyone who drives motorcycles at high speeds), "My only worry was when I found out how slow I had been."
Pee Wee Reese is now working for CBS and the Yankees, but old loyalties die hard. Pee Wee has made a regular ritual of ending his Yankee Stadium sessions by opening the door to the players" dressing room on his way home and yelling, "To hell with the Yankees." Most of the time clubhouse man Pete Previte is the only one there, but the other day Mickey Mantle and ex-Yankee Billy Martin, who had dropped in for a visit, invited Reese in to discuss the matter. After delivering a short dissertation on the number of times the Yankees had beaten the Dodgers, Mantle and Martin allowed Pee Wee to leave to catch a plane. As Reese departed, Mantle yelled through the door, "To hell with the oldtimers."
To find out for himself whether a highway should be built into Michigan's largest remaining wilderness region. Governor George Romney went for a 7½-mile hike in Porcupine Mountains State Park. Actually, to say hike is incorrect. It was more like a sprint, as other members of a party of two dozen could attest. The first hill in the park, a vast Upper Peninsula stand of virgin birch, maple and bass-wood on the shore of Lake Superior, wasn't so bad—mostly because the group was walking down it. When they started uphill, however, the attrition began. Jerry Chiappetta, outdoors editor of The Detroit Free Press, sprained an ankle. Ronmey's press secretary began to wilt under the weight of his knapsack and Romney had to carry it. The Detroit News political reporter Bob Popa, who had brought his own knapsack containing two six-packs of beer, kept suggesting a stop for a picnic. At the 4½-mile mark the 58-year-old Romney, who also plays three balls per hole of golf, remarked that this was about as far as he ran and walked each morning. At the end of the scramble Popa observed, "It wasn't exactly like going home from the office. Big George kept pouring on the coal." Big George just smiled. "They don't need a highway here," continued Popa. who finished the hike with 12 unopened beer cans and bunions, "they need a chairlift." George declared that they didn't need either, a courageous decision for a man whose public and private livelihoods have always depended on the sale of automobiles. Every baseball manager has a different way of relieving that intolerable pressure, whether it be raising petunias, making kindling of clubhouse furniture or just plain brooding in a small, dark corner. Milwaukee's Bobby Bragan pounds a cheap secondhand piano. "I play a kind of honky-tonk," he confesses, "and you have to sing along to know what I'm playing. But it's a good way of releasing tension." Except at night. Bragan's wife, fearing the wrath of neighbors, won't let Bobby play his piano after night-game losses.
Richard Rodgers and his wife Dorothy, who have played serious croquet for 30 years, were preparing to hold their "first Connecticut circuit" croquet tournament at their Southport. Conn. home. "This will be a serious tournament," said Rodgers. "We're all very serious about croquet. This game is more exercise than golf and more fun too. The most important point is strategy. You must plan your moves, then execute them. It's work every minute." Rodgers added, however, that no one in the group of serious croquet players, which includes Max Shulman and David Wayne—at whose homes part of the lengthy tournament will be played—has ever gotten "really mad and thrown mallets." But as a precaution, players avoid betting: "This game is passionate enough without money."
East German cycling champion Monika Hoig found a way to ride a bicycle right through the Berlin Wall. In London to compete at Herne Hill, the 22-year-old cyclist pedaled over to the West German embassy to request political asylum. She was tired of the strict discipline imposed on East German cyclists, said Miss Hoig, and, besides, she really wanted to be a hairdresser.
Bettors took quite a bath when Pluvier III beat 3-to-10 favorite Speedy Scot in the Roosevelt International, so it seemed only fair for Swedish Owner Gosta Valentin (below, left) and Trainer-Driver Gunnar Nordin to take one too. Both got thrown into the pool at the victory celebration, with their cup tossed in for good measure. The $50,000 they had won, however, kept crisp and dry.
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