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PEOPLE
Razzberry of the Week:
First it was Pete Rozelle banning air horns at NFL games (SI, Dec. 21, 1970), and now it is L. Stanley Berenson, Florida jai-alai mogul, barring Brooklyn's Robert Pearce from his Miami fronton for booing players and officials. Pearce is sort of an air horn with legs, it seems, and Berenson says, "I'm just afraid he'll start a riot. That voice starts booing, and soon everyone's booing." Pearce appealed his purge to Florida's Pari-Mutuel Wagering Division, and after 30 minutes of "riotous testimony" state officials unanimously upheld his right of dissent.
L. Stanley Berenson is pretty mad about the ruling. Hey, L. Stanley, why not charge Pearce with crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot? That would make him the Miami One, and think of the publicity!
A tough week for granting the Total Humiliation Award, but after careful consideration it goes not to Spiro T. Agnew (page 12), but to a fellow Baltimorean, Shorty Musgrove. Mr. Musgrove, a regular at an establishment known as Jerry's Stag Bar, tried a deft bank shot with the six-ball and scratched (a small humiliation in itself). But when he reached into the corner pocket for the cue ball his arm got stuck. It took the police, the fire department and the eventual dismantling of the pool table to get him out. To deny Shorty the THA would be the ultimate humiliation.
And for Baseball Scout of the Week we nominate Dode Hall, sports reporter for the Indiana State Reformatory newspaper. In a recent column Dode addressed the following appeal to all the state's judges, prosecutors and policemen: "The Indiana Reformatory varsity baseball and softball teams are in dire need of league players, especially pitchers. Would you please oblige us?"
Things are better at the Utah state pen. The Colorado State basketball team drove past it on the way to Brigham Young and Center Doug Tate observed, "If you think our league is tough, you oughta play there sometime. When I was in high school we played them and they had a 24-0 record. Of course, they don't have to go on the road."
Have some physical fitness tips from Composer Rudolf Friml (Donkey Serenade, Rose Marie, The Vagabond King and like that). Friml is very big on vibrator belts, bicycle riding, brisk walks, push-ups, swinging chairs up and down, standing on his head and having his 110-pound wife walk around on his back. "I think people with children should have them walk up and down their backs," he says. "I knock off at 5 p.m. every day and sleep for three hours. Then I get up, I have a glass of Scotch or champagne and enjoy myself in my own home with my music and my friends." Mr. Friml is 91, obviously going on 125.
The temperature was 102° when Count Basie arrived in Perth, Australia, and the bandleader was sipping lemonade during an airport press conference when a reporter leaned over and whispered, "There is something stronger upstairs."
"Oh?" said the Count. "Cassius Clay?"
So what's in a name? Something, the sponsors of the winter festival in Utica, N.Y. figured when they chose Margaret Snow, Wescott Storm, Huntington Frost and Milton Winter for the festival's advisory committee. And nothing, we trust, in the case of the Hawkins family of Las Vegas. Budweiser Hawkins Jr. is a heady substitute on the freshman basketball team at Pepperdine College in California, whose scouts may or may not ever yearn for his younger brother, Falstaff. And then there is his sister—no, no, not Schlitz—Virginia Dare.
You got a funny name you can expect trouble, but if you're just Dale Haarman what can happen, except people will leave out one of the a's? Here's what can happen. Your basketball coach, Jerry Radtke, submits his St. Bernard High School team roster to the Cincinnati papers in his own handwriting, and Dale somehow becomes "Okle." Nobody ever corrects the error. Haarman turns out to be one of the top scorers in the school's history. He is in the newspapers a lot, as Okle, and Okie he surely is going to remain until his dying day. A course in the Palmer Method to you, Coach Radtke.
And here we have—um—well, what we have is the bull jumping over the matador, which, since it never happens, there is no fancy word for. The crowd in Spain's Aranjuez bullring leaped to its feet, and Matador Miguel Pérez hit the dirt. Then the bull came down and Perez got up and fought so brilliantly that the disbelieving crowd awarded him both ears and the tail. But not the wings.
Kurt Vonnegut was in Washington recently and at a press conference a reporter asked the author whether he had any bizarre talents (what kind of question is that, anyway?). Vonnegut replied, "Every writer thinks he's a great Ping-Pong player." Sounds like a new league forming. Let's open the season with Vonnegut and Norman Mailer against Edward Albee and Marianne Moore? Jimmy the Greek, are you ready? What? No action? So it goes.
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