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"It's more fun than stealing bases," said Maury Wills, as he donned a red-and-white-striped vest, picked up a five-string banjo and joined a Dixieland band (below) in St. Louis' Gaslight Square just before heading home to Los Angeles and leading the Dodgers to the pennant. "Maybe if playing the banjo was my primary job stealing bases would be more fun. Sometimes I go out to a banjo place in whatever town we're playing and then hurry back to the hotel." The Dodger captain, who insists he is no banjo hitter, says he may make a tour after the World Series.
Former U.S. Treasurer Ivy Baker Priest, visiting Miller Park in Sacramento, Calif., took a cue from George Washington and tried to throw a silver dollar across the 245-foot-wide Sacramento River. The coin went less than a quarter of the way and plopped into the water. "I did this to show that a dollar doesn't go as far as it used to," said Mrs. Priest.
It is not the salary they pay Chico Vaughn that bothers the St. Louis Hawks so much as his bill for footwear. Vaughn is pigeon-toed and the screeching stops he makes on the basketball court put a severe strain on his shoes. He wears out one pair of $10 shoes about every three days, or 75 pairs—$750 worth—every season. The Hawks are hoping an orthopedic specialist can straighten out Chico's feet and the team budget at the same time.
Braumeister August A. Busch Jr., owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, in Dallas to receive the Wine and Spirits Guild of America's achievement award, explained how he stays trim despite putting away 15 glasses of beer a day. "I walk about 50 miles a week touring our plants. Besides, beer does not make you fat." Gussie also said he will soon open a public garden at his brewery in Houston, featuring an aviary with trained macaws and perhaps a cardinal or two. It is bound to be a popular place in humid Houston—admission and beer will both be free.
It was back to college for an old Army halfback, Dwight D. Eisenhower. On hand to officiate at the opening of Gettysburg College's $250,000 Musselman Stadium, he was introduced as "Coach Eisenhower" and completed a pass to Cheerleader Cheryl Keim, who had to make a shoestring catch. Earlier, near Seneca Falls, N.Y., he was the main speaker at ground-breaking ceremonies for Eisenhower College, which will open in September 1967. Comedian Bob Hope was there, too, and could not resist a wisecrack: "When Ike asked me to come to a ground breaking I thought he meant a game of golf."
When Mike Henry quit football to become the new Tarzan one of his coaches on the Los Angeles Rams commented sourly: "No middle linebacker would be much good anyway worrying about his profile." Turns out Henry might have had it easier knocking heads with NFL fullbacks. In Rio for the filming of the latest ape-man epic, Tarzan was doublecrossed by his chimpanzee pal, Cheetah. Instead of kissing Henry for the cameras, the chimp bit him on the chin, delaying the movie 10 days, while Henry, 18 stitches in his manly profile, recuperated in his hotel room.
The La Jolla (Calif.) Rough Water Swim has been held every year since 1916, and the event's undisputed booby-prize king is Max Miller, 66, author of I Cover the Waterfront and more than 20 other books. A heart attack kept him out of the race last year, but up to then he had entered 31 times and finished last 31 times, a tradition he started long ago to prevent anyone else from being embarrassed. This year, fully recovered, he reclaimed last place, swimming the mile distance as a friend carrying nitroglycerin pills accompanied him on a paddle-board just in case.
It was so chilly when Jimmy Demaret and Sammy Snead met in a televised golf match at Colorado Springs that Snead wore his pajama pants under his slacks, as well as the usual hat covering his bald head. But the frigid weather did not seem to bother one interested spectator—Lieut. General James Doolittle, leader of the famous World War II raid on Tokyo. "The general walked the entire 18 holes with us in 32° weather," said Demaret, "and he isn't even a golfer."
Angling conditions on the Spey River in Scotland were not supposed to be good, but you could not prove it by Great Britain's Prince Charles. On his first day out he killed four salmon, including one weighing 18 pounds, and added three more the second day. At the Fochabers Hotel, where the fishing prince spent the night, a member of the staff said, "It's not been a particularly good season. As far as we know Prince Charles bagged the best catch up here for some time."
The mischievous mastermind at the controls of the Astrodome's huge and complex scoreboard is Bill Giles, son of National League President Warren Giles. Earlier this season, when Umpire John Kibler made the second controversial call against the Houston Astros in a single series, publicity man Giles flashed a message on the scoreboard: KIBLER DID IT AGAIN. This brought a scolding phone call from his father, who was not at all amused. Last week young Giles became the father of his third son, and he passed out cigars labeled: "Giles—not Kibler—did it again."
The world's junior welterweight champion, Carlos (Morocho) Hernandez, seems to be a swinger in or out of the ring. Once he drove his manager's Cadillac into a wall and another time was arrested for disorderly conduct late at night (he told police he was on his way to an orphanage to visit a friend). Now comes the latest Caracas escapade: a quick KO over young television model Gisela Socorro Fernandez. Hernandez fractured her jaw with a right-hand punch because, he said, she was disrespectful.
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