PEOPLE

Sandy Koufax was golfing at La Costa Country Club, just north of San Diego, and one of his efforts winged into the rough. "No, no," a pro told him. "Get that left arm all the way around! Straighten it out!" "If I could straighten it out," Sandy replied, "I'd be pitching at Dodger Stadium tonight."

The British Lions Rugby team was practicing for a game in Capetown, South Africa when a somewhat older gentleman dropped by to toss the ball back and forth with the boys. It was heart-transplant patient Philip Blaiberg, who 30 years ago had captained the Rugby team at the Royal Dental College in London. "It's really wonderful to feel the turf under my feet and to smell the grass and the leather," Blaiberg said, but when, after a few passes, he steadied himself to punt the ball his wife Eileen moved in. "Now then, Phil, that's quite enough," she said. "You're only showing off."

The new Phoenix Suns basketball team certainly has a fun group of owners—Andy Williams, Bobbie Gentry, Ed Ames, Tony Curtis, and now Henry Mancini, the composer, who has promised to write something for the team. It will be a victory song, a fight song or a waltz, depending on how they play, and he can always call it Sun River.

Pedaling their wares to peddle their wares, a group of bicycle manufacturing executives from companies such as Arnold, Schwinn & Company and the Huffman Manufacturing Company, with their wives, recently undertook a three-day, 172-mile cycling trip in Ohio. "The bicycle is now the adult recreational vehicle," H. M. (Huffy) Huffman announced to his fellows in the industry at a blast-off dinner preceding the trip. "What's been holding us back? The feeling that all we do is show the way to foreign competitors, that's what. But now the adult market is potentially double the size of the kid market, which we've dominated!" These words ringing in their ears, they all took off. When they got back, the ladies, at least, had some pretty specific thoughts about bicycle design. The adult market might be potentially double the size of the kid market, but the adult bottom is already double the size of the kid bottom, they pointed out. Their husbands promised to give the question their close attention.

The Dodgers' new pitcher, Mudcat Grant, did not even have to move into the neighborhood in Los Angeles to be treated to the latest in California hospitality to Negro ballplayers. All he had to do was pose for a modeling layout in a turnaround in Los Angeles to bring out a homeowner with a pistol. "I was having these pictures taken," Grant says, "when this nut shot a .38 at me. The guy jumps up on a wall around his property and all of a sudden 'pow,' he shoots at me. I'll tell you, I was some scared. I asked him if he was shooting at me, and he said, 'Get out of here!' " Grant and the photographer got, straight to the police. "I don't think anyone should have the right to use firearms that way," Grant said, with I considerable restraint. The homeowner claims that his aim was at the air, not Grant. The hearing is set for this month.

Jack Valenti, the former presidential aide who slept easier knowing that Lyndon Baines Johnson was in the White House, may be panicking now that Mr. Johnson is planning to vacate it. Valenti has taken up karate. When he is in Washington he turns up twice a week for Tae Kwon Do lessons in a class which includes Venezuelan Ambassador Enrique Tejera-Paris and Gerard Gaussen, counselor at the French embassy. Another student, until he went off to campaign for a congressional seat, was former Chief of Protocol James W. Symington. A switch from protocol to karate seems indicative of the times.

While the rest of the family engages in such exceedingly vigorous activities as polo and trans-Channel water skiing, England's Queen Mother fishes. She has fished for years, is considered an excellent angler, and this spring found her as usual casting flies for salmon on the River Dee—found her, but did not find many salmon. The Queen Mother went out for an hour or so every day, regardless of the weather, but when queried about her luck a royal spokesman could only observe, "Well, you know how it is. Sometimes the fish are there and sometimes they are not."

King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola of Belgium made a state visit to Ireland and, accompanied by Prime Minister Jack Lynch, they called upon President Eamon de Valera. Baudouin happened to wonder if he might have a demonstration of that mad and violent Irish amusement, hurling, and Prime Minister Lynch, a former champion, promptly produced a hurley stick from his car. President de Valera came up with another from the depths of some presidential closet. Officials found two more, and King Baudouin's hurling instruction got under way. Baudouin is a golfer, and the proper hurling grip is opposite to that used in golf, but after a bit the Prime Minister brought the King along to the point where he managed several decent shots. He also demonstrated a certain basic feel for the game—as the photograph shows, Baudouin prudently removed his glasses before grasping his hurley.

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