PEOPLE

"The other guides have a feeling about Mt. Rainier that is sort of a religion," says Joe Kennedy III, "and I'm getting the feeling too." Joe (left), with Phursumba Sherpa of Nepal, has signed on as an apprentice guide to climbers of Mt. Rainier and will spend the rest of the summer learning mountaineering under Lou Whittaker, brother of Jim Whittaker, the first American to climb Everest. So far young Joe has spent a lot of time hauling supplies the four miles up to Camp Muir, at the 10,000-foot level, and he confessed recently, "I still get tired." Not so his mother, Ethel, who came out to visit and zipped to Camp Muir at a pace that impressed the local pros. Nobody made her carry stuff, though.

"I've been a ham all my life," observes Sugar Ray Robinson of his acting career, "so why shouldn't I get paid for it?" The former middle- and welterweight champion is being paid quite a lot for it these days, having done stage plays, TV series and commercials, but mere money could not lure him into a film role of a drug addict. "I was up for a good part at Fox," he said last week, "but they wanted me to play a dope fiend. I couldn't do it. I've spent too many years building up a good name." One of the things Sugar's good name is attached to is The Sugar Ray Robinson Youth Foundation. This is an enterprise very important to the ex-champion, and perhaps it's why he sounded uneasy even about the beer commercial he had made with Rocky Graziano. "The residuals arc great," he admitted, "but I wish it had been for a soft drink. I don't drink beer."

Astronaut Jack Swigert received a special award at the annual banquet of the National Association of Collegiate Athletic Directors in Houston—a "pinch hitter of the year" trophy for the man who went in for Astronaut Thomas Mattingly on Apollo 13. Acknowledging the honor, Swigert said modestly, "I'm not used to speaking this early on the program. I'm usually way down the line. By the time I stand up to talk I feel like Barbara Hutton's fifth husband—I know what I'm supposed to do; the problem is to make it interesting."

When Ted Williams called his fishing buddy Bud Leavitt of the Bangor Daily News a while ago, he sounded very down and out. "What's wrong with your voice?" Leavitt asked. Said Williams: "I've been yelling and screeching and even praying for a few base hits. We can't get three hits in one inning if it kills us, and it's killing me. I can't sleep after we lose a ball game. Someone figured out we've lost 14 games by one run. If you don't think that isn't hard to take...I play the game over and over all night." Leavitt asked Williams what happens if Bob Short, the Senators' owner, is elected governor of Minnesota. Williams said, "If he becomes governor, I'm a candidate to become his conservation director, I probably would make a lousy conservation director, but I'd sure as hell get in some fishing." Which always has been red's idea of the good life, and, as he says, "You never know how good life is until you get into this business."

A wrestler who started out in life as Spiros Manoussakis has changed his name to Spiro Arion, which may not be a household word in the U.S. but is mighty close to it. Arion is now booked as a main eventer on the Coast, and has developed some real patriots for his cause. Many of his fans call him Agnew, and at a recent match against Pat Patterson he was urged to hit Patterson with a golf ball or a microphone. One enthusiast shouted, "We're matching you with Walter Cronkite next!" In the wrestling world, with its neat division between good guys and villains, Spiro is classified as a hero.

"The happiest moment of my life," said Jim Ryun. "The only thing to come close to comparing with it was my marriage." He was speaking of the birth of his first child, a daughter to be named Heather, born to Jim and his wife Anne at 3:29 p.m. on Father's Day. "You know," he went on, "women display an awful lot of courage in this situation...everything went well, and I was never really concerned, but the tension must have been greater than I realized while Anne was in labor." In the evening when the delivery was over, Ryun went home to bed a little after 8 o'clock and didn't wake up until 15 hours later. "After a big race I was always up at 6 o'clock in the morning, ready to run eight miles or so," he said later. Hospital routine being what it is, Jim's 15-hour sleep probably was a good deal more than Anne got, and babies being what they are, it is probably more than Jim's going to get any time soon.

"Aw, they've just got a bunch of ringers," said John McCormack, proving once again that there are some feelings you simply don't outgrow. McCormack may be 78 years old and about to retire as Speaker of the House, but his team lost. For the eighth time in nine years, the Republicans defeated the Democrats in the annual Congressional baseball game. The Democrats apparently did win a pre-game cloakroom skirmish—they got the Republicans to play Vinegar Bend Mizell in right field instead of letting him pitch, and their tactics were straightforward enough. "If Mizell pitches," they are reported to have said, "we won't play." So Mizell didn't pitch and the Democrats didn't play much, losing by a score of 6-4.

The Eagles' Lynn Hoyem left pro football because he wanted to fly, and he is now a flight engineer for Northwest Orient Airlines. He expects to become a copilot after about 100 more flights and, in another year, a captain. "Football and flying are close, more than people realize," he says. "You have to try for perfection, because if you try just for 75%, where are you going to fall?"

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