PEOPLE
Wilt Chamberlain may now be the highest-paid player in basketball, but Rick Barry is still the highest-paid nonplayer in the game, at $75,000 for the year he is sitting out. (Rick's is a modest stipend, actually, when you consider that Wilt is paid for playing for one team and Rick is paid for not playing for two.) At any rate, Barry has kept busy playing golf. Known as a long hitter, he has been working daily with Pro Ted Neist at the Sequoyah Country Club in Oakland, Calif. and has trimmed his handicap from 15 to 9 and is still on the way down. By the time basketball is ready to let him back in, Barry may be ready to defect to pro golf.
Saint cheerleader and stockholder Al Hirt (who also plays the trumpet) is feeling more optimistic about one of the names on the team's injured list. Gumbo, the Saints' mascot, was a six-month-old Saint Bernard puppy weighing a mere 75 pounds when, during the opening game with the Rams, he was nailed for "a mild concussion" by a member of his own team. Gumbo, definitely a rookie mascot, was trying to sniff at his players as they ran onto the field. Hirt once said sadly that Gumbo had not really been right since the accident, "but we had no one to bring up from the taxi squad" However, "He's had a rest," Hirt now says hopefully, "so he'll be in top shape for our next home game October 28 against the Steelers." It would be nice if the Saints were in top shape, too.
The little princes have been hopping around recently. England's Prince Andrew (below, on the left), with cousin Viscount Linley behind him, prepares to lead his team in a soccer match, and Prince Hiro of Japan {opposite, on the left) helps teammates carry the Daruma during a race at his school's athletic meet. A Daruma is an image of a famous Buddhist monk, and the race is run with it balanced upon two poles—sort of a communal egg-and-spoon-race effort. Prince Andrew's sport of soccer has not quite caught on in the U.S. It seems even more unlikely that Daruma-carrying is going to become an American enthusiasm.
ABC-TV has recruited a number of well-known persons to go on safari for its American Sportsman series. Now they have selected Movie Star Troy Donahue to plunge into the jungles of Venezuela in search of jaguar, and Donahue's approach to the assignment is rather refreshing. The only hunting he has done was for ducks, quail and pheasant when he was a boy on Long Island, so he purchased a book on jaguar hunting and practiced his marksmanship in shooting galleries. While he is ready to attempt the stalking and killing of this jaguar, Donahue's remarks sound more like Leicester Hemingway than his brother Ernest: "I am not afraid yet," and, "I would also like to try to catch one alive, though I would not know what to do with it."
Actor James Garner got all caught up in the spirit of the thing when he played the race driver in Grand Prix and took to driving a Formula I himself during part of the film. Now he finds himself cast as Wyatt Earp in a western epic called Hour of the Gun, and he rides, of course, a horse. "The horse," Garner reports, "is a very poor form of transportation."
It sounded like a very grand scheme. Distance Runner Ron Clarke was reported by an English magazine to have formed a company in Melbourne with the thought-provoking name of Fitness in Motion, Ltd., which was to operate gymnasiums, swimming pools, squash and tennis courts, and bring world stars to compete in Melbourne. A check with Clarke indicates that actually the project is not too far along. "I have formed a company, all right," he concedes, "but there are only two $1 paid-up shares."
One of the least enthusiastic observers of the upcoming football scene may well be Lynda Bird Johnson, who is planning to be married on Saturday, December 9. Some of the proceedings are to be televised, but so are the proceedings involving the Buffalo, Boston, Green Bay, Los Angeles, Florida and Miami football teams, and Miss Johnson's fiancé, Chuck Robb, has said that he hates to think of his friends having to come to the wedding and miss the games. An unlikely source of sympathy for the President's daughter is California's Republican governor, Ronald Reagan. Reagan had agreed to speak at the Oregon State-Southern California game on November 11 in Corvallis, Ore. "No," said Oregon State President James Jensen, firmly. "The fans are there to see the game—to let off steam, not to listen to speakers." Well, first things first, Governor Reagan and Miss Johnson.
TWO PHOTOS