A roundup of the sports information of the week
BASEBALL—ROCHESTER, the Baltimore Orioles' top farm club, won the International League pennant on the final day, defeating last-place Syracuse 10-7, in the league's closest championship race in nine years. Four times in eight days the lead changed hands—from Rochester to Toronto to Columbus, but the Red Wings regained first place with three days to go and the race went down to the last day with a chance for a triple tie. Columbus and Toronto also won their final games and tied for second, one game out. In the Pacific Coast League, TULSA (Cardinals) won the Eastern Division pennant by 4½ games, while SEATTLE (Angels) came in first in the Western Division by six games.
BOATING—TAHOE MISS, driven by Mira Slovak of Los Angeles, won the final heat by more than half a mile and took the Governor's Cup for unlimited hydros for the third straight year, on the Ohio River near Madison, Ind. (page 110).
Paul Elvstr√∏m of Denmark, sailing Scandale, defeated defending champion Lowell North of San Diego by three points to take the world Star Class championship in Kiel, Germany.
BOXING—CASSIUS CLAY's fourth defense this year of his world heavyweight title ended in a TKO of Germany's Karl Mildenberger in the 12th round in Frankfurt, Germany (page 34).
FOOTBALL—NFL: Last year's champions, GREEN BAY, walloped Baltimore 24-3 as they opened the NFL season in Milwaukee (page 26). In the West's major upset, DETROIT, winless in five exhibition games, beat Chicago 14-3, scoring twice in the second quarter on a six-yard touchdown by Fullback Tom Nowatzke and a 25-yard pass from Milt Plum to Flanker Pat Studstill. LOS ANGELES dropped the new Atlanta Falcons 19-14, and Minnesota's field goal in the last six seconds tied San Francisco 20-20. In the East, ST. LOUIS defeated Philadelphia 16-13 when Jim Bakken kicked a 27-yard field goal with five seconds to play, and CLEVELAND came from behind on Frank Ryan's three touchdown passes in the second half to beat Washington 38-14. New York tied Pittsburgh 34-34 after trailing 31-17 at the end of the third quarter.
AFL: HOUSTON, sparked by George Blanda's passes and field goals, took a 2-0 lead in the East with a 45-7 win over Denver and a 31-0 shutout of Oakland, while in the West, SAN DIEGO won two in a row, beating Buffalo 27-7 and Boston 24-0. NEW YORK sat behind the Oilers in the East with a win over the new Miami Dolphins 19-14; BOSTON had an 0-1 record; BUFFALO, last year's AFL champion, and MIAMI were in the cellar with two losses each. In the West, KANSAS CITY beat Buffalo 42-20; OAKLAND split two, and DENVER, with one loss and no wins, brought up the rear.
COLLEGE: Terry Southall threw four touchdown passes to lead BAYLOR to a 35-12 win over Syracuse in the season's major college opener in Waco, Texas. Southall hit 14 of 28 passes for 229 yards.
GOLF—GENE LITTLER, Jack Nicklaus and Al Geiberger tied at the end of the 36-hole World Series of Golf in Akron with 143s, but Littler took the championship and the $50,000 first prize when he sank a 22-foot birdie putt on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff.
Mickey Wright won her second tournament in a row and her fifth of the season as she shot a four-under-par 284 (including a 67 in the third round) to take the Pacific Ladies' Classic in Eugene, Ore.
HARNESS RACING—"He's going home for a little rest," said Trainer-Driver Stanley Dancer after NOBLE VICTORY ($2.40), holder of the world record for a mile in competition, won his seventh consecutive start, finishing 2½ lengths in front of Short Stop in Yonkers' $100,000 Hilltop Trot. Dancer said he did not plan to start Noble Victory again until the Oct. 8 Gotham at Yonkers.
HORSE RACING—Bill Shoemaker rode DIPLOMAT WAY ($15.40), a 2-year-old Nashua colt owned by Harvey Peltier, to a head victory over 20-to-1 shot Wilbur Clark in the $367,700 Arlington-Washington Futurity, the world's richest race for Thoroughbreds, at Arlington Park (page 112).
Sodium, winner of the Irish Derby, scored a neck victory over Epsom Derby winner Charlottown, the favorite, in the $137,900 St. Leger Stakes, last of the five classics of the English racing season, at Doncaster, England.
C. V. Whitney's SWISS CHEESE ($8.20), ridden by Johnny Rotz, took Aqueduct's $110,130 Matron Stakes by a head over Wheatley Stable's favored Great Era, with Braulio Baeza up.
MOTORCYCLING—Italy's GIACOMO AGOSTINI took the world 500-cc. title away from defending champion Mike Hailwood of Great Britain when he won the 500 at the Grand Prix of Nations in Monza, Italy. Hailwood, who already has gained both the world 350-cc. and 250-cc. titles this year, had won four straight 500-cc. world championships.
MOTOR SPORTS—Australia's JACK BRABHAM dropped out of the Grand Prix of Italy in Monza (won by Ludovico Scarfiotti of Italy) on the ninth lap because of mechanical troubles with his Brabham-Repco, but still clinched his third (1959 and 1960) world driving championship.
Averaging 96.48 mph in his Lola-Chevrolet over the 203-mile course at St. Jovite, Que., England's JOHN SURTEES finished 6.5 seconds ahead of Bruce McLaren of New Zealand to take the opening race in the new Canadian-American Challenge Cup series.
Chuck Parsons, a 42-year-old driver from Carmel, Calif., took the U.S. road-racing championship when he won the SCCA's 500-mile Road America at Elkhart Lake, Wis.
ROWING—"I'm numb," said DON SPERO, a 27-year-old graduate student at Columbia, after he came from behind at the halfway mark and took the single-sculls title at the world championships in Bled, Yugoslavia, giving the U.S. its only gold medal. Spero defeated Holland's H. J. Wienese by one length, in 7:05.92. EAST GERMANY, however, dominated the championships by winning three gold medals—the pairs without coxswain and the fours with and without coxswain. The featured eights went to WEST GERMANY, who beat the Soviet Union by half a length. SWITZERLAND took the double sculls (the U.S. placed second for a silver medal) and HOLLAND won the gold medal in pairs with coxswain.
TENNIS—FRED STOLLE of Australia defeated countryman John Newcombe 4-6, 12-10, 6-3, 6-4 for the men's singles championship in the U.S. nationals at Forest Hills, and MARIA BUENO of Brazil beat Nancy Richey of San Angelo, Tex. 6-3, 6-1 to become the first woman in 20 years to win four U.S. national titles (page 105). In the senior singles JAROSLAV DROBNY of England, the 1954 Wimbledon champion, defeated Robert Sherman of Temple City, Calif. in straight sets.
TRACK & FIELD—HARALD NORPOTH of West Germany bettered the world record for the seldomrun 2,000-meter by 3.4 seconds when he was clocked in 4:57.8 at a meet in Hagen, Germany. The pending mark, set in September 1965, is held by Josef Odlozil of Czechoslovakia.
MILEPOSTS—HIRED: As head basketball coach at William and Mary College, WARREN MITCHELL, 33-year-old assistant at Davidson for the past two seasons, to replace Bill Chambers, who resigned a week earlier to enter private business.
SWITCHED: Sports car racing's spring classic, the 12-hour International Grand Prix of Endurance, better known as SEBRING, from Sebring, Fla., site of the race for 15 years, to Palm Beach, by the Automobile Racing Club of Florida. Club spokesmen said the move was being made because Palm Beach offered better facilities for the actual race as well as for the increasing crowd. Palm Beach International Raceway will finance an estimated $1.5 million expansion of the raceway.
SIGNED: By CAZZIE RUSSELL, last season's collegiate player of the year with Michigan, a three-year contract with the New York Knicks for $200000, the highest ever for an NBA rookie.
FIRED: As manager of the Boston Red Sox after two seasons, BILLY HERMAN, 57, by Owner Tom Yawkey, who said "a change was in order." Herman, the fifth major league manager to be dropped this season, came to Boston after coaching two seasons (1958 and 1959) for the Milwaukee Braves. He then spent five seasons as the Red Sox third-base coach before replacing Johnny Pesky in 1965. Named as interim manager was First-base Coach PETE RUNNELS, 38.
DIED: FRANK SCHMITZ, 20, four-time NCAA gymnastics champion at Southern Illinois University and world champion in men's tumbling in 1965; when the small plane he was piloting crashed into a field near his home town of Lafayette, La.
