SCORECARD

A THOUGHT FOR THE NBA

If being blackballed by the National Basketball Association was worth a $1.5 million settlement for Connie Hawkins, what is it worth in the somewhat dissimilar case of Doug Moe?

The NBA's benevolence to Hawkins is an aftereffect of the point-shaving scandals in college basketball in the early 1960s. Any player whose name was involved in the investigations, however marginally, was declared persona non grata by the NBA. But, when the American Basketball Association was formed in 1967, some players banned by the NBA were accepted by the new league because none had been proved guilty of point shaving. Among them were Hawkins of Iowa, Roger Brown of Dayton, Moe of North Carolina, Charlie Williams of Seattle and Tony Jackson of St. John's.

Hawkins was a freshman at Iowa when the trouble came and never played for his school. Moe was everybody's All-America at North Carolina in 1960 and was drafted No. 2 by the old Chicago Packers. "I went up to Chicago and signed a contract to play in the NBA," Moe recalled, "but the same day the scandal broke and my name was involved. The league then told me I couldn't play. What I did wrong was to accept $75 from Aaron Wagman, a gambler, the summer before my senior year. He was after me to shave points but I refused." (He also failed to report the offer to his coach.)

After a tour in the army, two years of basketball in Italy and some insurance selling, Moe became an ABA star with the New Orleans Buccaneers in 1967-68 and is now on the roster of the Carolina Cougars after being traded from the 1968-69 champion Oakland Oaks.

"You could say that I am looking into the possibility of a lawsuit," Moe said.

BACKWARD, TURN BACKWARD

That funny noise you keep hearing is the sound of high jumpers Fosbury-flopping backward over the bar all around the world.

In France a Mlle. Martine Dubucquoy set a new French women's junior record by clearing 5'8½" with the Fosbury method.

Bill Elliott of the University of Texas won the Southwest Conference high jump with a 6'10" leap and cleared 7 feet on an extra jump.

Meta Antenen, a Swiss miss whose previous best was 5'3¾", switched to the flop this spring and quickly improved by almost four inches. Her new best of 5'7 ‚Öú" helped Meta set a world pentathlon record of 5,046 points.

In Hungary, Istvan Major set a new national record at 6'11½".

And Debbie Brill of Canada, who says she invented the technique independently (she calls it the "Brill Bend"), took second in the women's AAU meet in Dayton with a leap of 5'8".

Now, just outside Fosbury's native Portland, Ore., a high school coach is experimenting with a backward long jump. Jim Wilson, Gresham High coach, thinks long jumpers may add up to a foot to their performances by making a half-turn in the air before landing. Working with Wilson to help him perfect the idea is Fosbury's college coach, Bernie Wagner of Oregon State.

ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION

The thermocline phenomenon, in which a lake separates into layers of sharply varying temperatures, the coldest at the bottom, is no longer a problem for fishermen at Lake Roberts in New Mexico's Gila National Forest.

It used to happen every summer at Roberts. Cold water would form a bottom layer, too cold and too oxygen-free for fish to live in. Only the top 15 feet would circulate enough to gain oxygen from the surface. Since Roberts averages 30 feet in depth, the under half of the lake was inaccessible to trout.

This year a Federal Water Pollution Control team devised a "bubble machine," consisting essentially of a finely porous stone attached to the outlet end of an air hose. With the hose on the bottom and operating, tiny bubbles are released, thus changing the specific gravity of the deepest water. Up comes the bottom layer to the top, and down goes the displaced top layer to the bottom.

Within 30 hours all strata of the lake had enough oxygen to support trout. Roberts can now be stocked with twice as many fish as before and at the end of an initial 144-hour test game department observers reported that fishermen already were getting better catches.

None of which will surprise owners of home aquariums, who have been using "air stones" to aerate their tanks for years.

EASY ACES

A golfer for many of his 61 years, Julian H. (Judy) Parke had three holes in one to his credit as of last spring. Then one recent day at the Ogden (Utah) Golf and Country Club, Judy stepped to the No. 9 tee, selected a four-wood and blasted the ball over a canyon, 150 feet deep. The ball bounced once on the green and into the cup, 170 yards away.

Next day Judy returned to the course, reached No. 9 again and quipped, "Guys, I'll show you how I made that hole in one yesterday." The four-wood came out of the bag again and Parke blasted the ball across the canyon and onto the green, where it bounced once and again plunked into the cup.

In the nine years that Jerry Comer has been the pro at Ogden, he said, only one previous golfer had aced No. 9.

SORING THE TRAINER

That much abused animal, the Tennessee Walking Horse, soon may get legal aid to end the cruel practice of "soring" (SI. Oct. 24,1960, et. seq.) by which the horse's hooves or pastern area are deliberately made intensely painful in order to induce him to move about the show ring with the admired Walking Horse gait. Decent training in the gait without the infliction of pain, is a long and skilled process, and some trainers still speed it up with caustic chemicals, nails or chains applied to the forefeet. Sometimes a horse's feet are so sore that he must be propped up on crutches in the stall or forced to move by an electric cattle prod.

Two years ago Senator Joseph D. Tydings of Maryland proposed a bill to stop the practice by making it illegal to ship a sored horse interstate. Since it was obviously an impossible task to police every highway at every state line the bill failed.

Now the senator has come up with a new bill that is quite a different bucket of oats. Under it, any representative of the Secretary of Agriculture, including deputized local officials, can inspect a horse at any show or exhibition. It also clearly defines "soring" as opposed to blistering for medicinal reasons. Penalty: up to $500 fine and six months in jail.

METAMORPHOSIS

Because he moved from track to professional football with such style and grace, Bob Hayes has inspired other sprinters to do the same. The latest is Tommie Smith, Olympic 200-meter champion, who signed a contract with the Cincinnati Bengals and joined the other Bengals' rookies in the club's camp at Wilmington, Ohio.

A 6'3" 190-pounder, Smith naturally aspires to be a wide receiver like the Dallas Cowboys' Hayes.

"I feel I'll make it," he says, "because I've really been working on it." One difficulty: he has not played football since high school days and then on a team that was not too successful.

"There's one thing for sure," says Paul Brown, the Bengals' coach and general manager. "He's fast enough."

NUCLEAR OVERKILL

Shellfish, algae and crabs in a 300-acre area of Biscayne Bay have been killed by heated water from two oil-powered generators owned by the Florida Power & Light Company at Turkey Point, 25 miles south of Miami. The kill drew pollution investigators to the spot to consider the probable damage to bay life when two nuclear generators owned by the company go into operation.

"If we get this kind of damage from a conventional generator," explained Nat Reed, conservation aide to Governor Claude Kirk, "the damage when they start operating those nuclear generators could be colossal." The two oil-heated generators expel one billion gallons of heated water a day. The nuclear generators will discharge three billion.

Over one five-hour period, water temperatures of 103° were recorded, well above the Dade County ordinance that specifies a maximum of 95°, the point at which scientists say most forms of marine life in that area begin to die. But FP&L is operating its Turkey Point plant under a variance from the ordinance. The variance expires July 31 and the company will seek a renewal.

"If it's necessary for them to curtail their operation or shut down their boilers as of July 31," warned Metro Commissioner Earl Starnes, "that's what they're going to have to do."

GONE FISHING

On the off chance that there is still someone out there who has not yet made his summer vacation plans, we pass along this really fun fishing trip that Pan Am has worked up with a Chicago travel agency. First, everything is provided: accommodations, all meals and ground transportation, fishing licenses, all tackle, guides and boats. And off you go on the trail of trout in Ireland; salmon in Norway; on to Yugoslavia for huchen; dry fly fishing in Austria; over to Mozambique for black marlin; then to New Zealand and Paraguay for trout; Ecuador for striped marlin; on to Costa Rica, Mexico and Nicaragua for tarpon; a bit of bone-fishing in British Honduras; back to Canada for lake trout and big muskies.

As any vacationer knows, timing is everything. The travel agency figures that the trip can be made in 33 weeks. Air fare comes to $2,585.75. Adding that to the agency's price, the total trip comes to $33,763.75. Per person, of course.

Then there is the 316-foot yacht, Antarna, which once belonged to the late dictator Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, among others. It has a 55-man crew, 31 sails (34,000 square feet), 12 double staterooms—eight of them with fireplaces—and gold-plated fixtures in the marble-paneled bathrooms.

You may charter the Antarna for $7,800 a day, although Bob Fisher, vice-president of the yacht brokerage firm of Northrop and Johnson, adds that, "of course, for longer trips, we make downward adjustments."

RESURRECTION

Racetrack followers will recall the strange story of Francine M., the $200,000 broodmare owned by Leslie Combs II (page 44) and Frank M. McMahon. Last April, Francine M. was reported to have died at Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, Ky. Actually, it was another bay mare, Hill Poppy, that expired, and not until six weeks later at Belmont did a routine lip-tattoo check reveal to the owners that they still owned Francine M.

Far from dead, the 5-year-old bay mare won the $5,825 Coquette Handicap at River Downs Race Track, Cincinnati, running the six furlongs in 1:08[3/5] and thereby breaking a record that had stood since Clang clocked 1:09[1/5] at Cincinnati's old Coney Island track on Oct. 12, 1935.

Francine M. will continue racing until the breeding season rolls around next spring.

THEY SAID IT

•George Keitt, winner of the first annual Stone Skipping competition at Mackinac Island, Mich., where he skipped a stone 15 times on Lake Huron: "Ninety percent of my success is due to an astute selection of stones."

•Edward Bennett Williams, Washington Redskins president, on Vice-President and Coach Vince Lombardi: "I can honestly say I will be the first president of a corporation to come into power upon the death, resignation or impeachment of the vice-president."

•Joe Don Looney, back from nine months in Viet Nam, after signing with the New Orleans Saints as a free agent: "I want to play football. I came out of the service with a new attitude."