PEOPLE

The first figure to come trotting out of the midnight shadows along Manhattan's Madison Avenue one unusual evening last week was a portly male, flushed of face and short of breath. The second, right behind the first and obviously enjoying herself, was breathing easily. Jackie Kennedy runs very well at this time of night, says a man who prudently stepped off the sidewalk to clear the track. "She has a smooth, natural gait," he says. "Not at all like a girl's, with her elbows locked against her sides. But, though she did not show it, she may have been a bit winded. She was lugging in a little as she passed."

The athletes who get the fat bonuses are the ones who have more to offer than muscle, said Ernie Banks, legs stuffed under a battered desk in a South Side Chicago elementary school (below). Working with the city's Jaycees, the Cub infielder is doing what he can to discourage school dropouts by underscoring the unsuspected rewards of education. "A great athlete is a well-rounded guy," he was saying, "a guy who knows more than one thing." Was his message getting across? "I think these kids get a lift," said Banks. "They think that nobody cares about them—then here's a man from a big bank or an athlete or somebody talking to them, personally." That, he thinks, is a good beginning.

"The day of the brute, the gorilla, in professional sports is over," says Minnesota Viking Halfback Tommy Mason. And isn't he glad—because he has lately gone into the men's toiletries business, and brutes and gorillas don't buy that stuff. Mason's "Quarterback Club" line includes lotions and deodorants and bracers and powders and a hair spray with a lacquer base that he uses himself. Hair spray for football players? Sure, haven't you heard? "I've used a spray for two years," says Mason, who handles his firm's advertising. "That's because I care what I look like. I feel men are as vain as women."

West Coast Publisher Robert Petersen was just back from Poland, where the government had accorded him the rare privilege of hunting boars and stags in the famous Bialowieza Forest, and guess what? His guide on the hunt was none other than Zigmond Musial, third cousin (he said) of Stan Musial. Maybe so, maybe not, said Stan the Man. His father got here around 1910 and pretty much lost track of relatives in the old country. "Many people claim to be my cousin," said Musial. "It's all right with me."

Hey, get a load of the magnificent 13-foot blue marlin that man has caught! And look at the full-page, four-color advertisement—the fisherman is Haydon Burns, governor of Florida, and he's saying, "Everybody's welcome in sunny Florida, where it's always fishing time...." Florida? But isn't that Hawaii's Kona Inn in the background? Well, as a matter of absolute fact, says the Florida Development Commission, which haphazardly prepared the ad, if you want to be technical and split hairs, then it's true: the fish was caught and the picture taken in Hawaii. But why the shouting? As the governor said: "I've landed fish almost as big off our own coast."

They never went in much for squash racquets out in Tilden, Neb. but, then, Richie Ashburn has come a long way from there. He has since discovered the game at his Philadelphia country club, and for all those loopy liners he once pinged off National League pitchers, Ashburn is moved to exclaim that "squash is the greatest sport I have ever played." Not yet is he the sport's greatest player: he was knocked out of a local Class C tournament the other day in the semifinals.

Giving time and talent for a benefit basketball game in Birmingham, Jet Quarterback Joe Namath joined other University of Alabama football stars to play against a similar team from Auburn and led the scoring on both sides (19 points) despite a bandaged knee. Later, set to thinking about his $400,000 calling to professional football, the AFL's Rookie of the Year began to kid about whether he was on the right track. It was his family and the Alabama coaches who had talked him into football, said Joe, and probably that was fine, but he wasn't sure. The Chicago White Sox and the St. Louis Cards had liked his stuff, too, and "maybe it would have been better if I had played baseball. I could hit the ball real good. I might have been a Mickey Mantle or a Willie Mays."

His ambition is a long and profitable career with the professionals and her baby is not due until August—so what makes more sense than for Warrior rookie Rick Barry and his wife Pamela to spend his day off shooting baskets (below) in a San Francisco church gymnasium? They've been playing basketball together ever since he was a star at the University of Miami and she was his coach's daughter. But nowadays they play a version of the game in which, Pam says, "He tries to drive by me and I push him a lot. I also try to steal the ball—and I can do it, too, because I'm so much smaller." That's for sure. He's six-eight. She's five-five.

TWO PHOTOS