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PEOPLE
That chap with hand on hip is Baltimore Colt Coach Don McCafferty, and he is talking with syndicated football columnist Nila Gilcrest, who wants a coaching job. Nila is serious about this. Previously she applied and was turned down at Idaho State. Her coaching theory goes something like this: "Football is the fairy tale of 1971, with the knights slaying dragons.... I would like to see more football players take up ballet for conditioning.... I also get a kick out of seeing big-muscled men.... Men are absolutely flabbergasted when they talk to me." Now come on, McCafferty, you can look more flabbergasted than that.
This week's Krazy Kat Award goes to Bob Gardner of Stroud, England. Bob ra'ared back and threw a brick 142'6" to lead a competition in the tossing of bricks and rolling pins, staged simultaneously in Stroud, Okla., Stroud, Canada and Stroud, Australia. The men from the four Strouds did not throw rolling pins, of course. Their women did that.
And this week's Knee-Slapper involves Tex Villarreal, who works for the Corpus Christi (Texas) Health Department and helps determine the effectiveness of a spraying campaign against mosquitoes by offering his own corpus to the little stingers. His record so far is 68 bites in 60 seconds and he's barely scratched the surface.
Nineteen-year-old Dennis wants to be a tree. He has dropped his surname along with a lot of other square old conventions and spends a good deal of time in Overton Park in Memphis, festooned from head to foot with leaves and branches. "I feel all clean and beautiful with leaves and twigs all over me," he says. When he was still just a twig Dennis saw Tarzan and Jane swinging through the woods, and, like, oh, wow. So if you see a tree with blue eyes and a mustache, it is only Dennis doing his thing. Understand now, Dennis is not yet a full-time tree; he has to get away from his construction job. Even trees have to eat, and Dennis has not learned how to manufacture his own chlorophyll. Although he doesn't seem to have any trouble with the sap.
Soccer star Pelé is presently having a (soccer) ball as star of a Brazilian film called The March. Pelé plays the part of a rebel slave who fights to free his people. Who do you think wins? Right.
Bobby Rush, billed as The Human Blockhead, was to be featured on Gooding's Midway during Milwaukee's Summerfest celebration, doing his own sporting specialty, which is driving nails and ice picks into his head. But Bobby copped out. In a recent auto accident he fractured some ribs.
See the pretty waitresses. See how they run. All this leggy activity goes on at the Charles Town (W. Va.)Turf Club where the dining room waitresses break from the starting gate and jog 4½ furlongs every day except when there is a heavy racing schedule, in which case they are preempted by the horses. "The idea," said waitress Cindy Ham, "is to lose weight. The other day after running I went up from 108½ to 111½ pounds." There's nothing like a success story.
Here is Albert, and Albert is swimming peacefully in his own little lake alongside a green at the Marco Island (Fla.) Golf and Country Club. Albert is a 10-foot alligator. Along comes E. E. (Bogue) Bailey, accompanied by his pedigreed poodle. Suddenly, Bailey alleges later in court, Albert slithers out of the lake and gulps down poodle, pedigree and all. Enter Judge Harold Smith. Albert has got to go, he rules, "lest he graduate from dogs to children." Or, who can say, even golfers? Plot now thickens: along comes Florida's Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission in a cross-complaint, claiming jurisdiction and accusing golfer Bailey of subsequently becoming a "gator-baiter" who tries to entice Albert from the lake in order to clobber him with golf clubs. Meanwhile, 200 Floridians sign a petition seeking to save Albert. Case still not settled. The score at halftime: Albert 1, People 1, Commission 1, Poodles 0.
Chet Morgan Jr., onetime teammate of Henry Aaron in the minors, has been teaching baseball in Italy since 1966, when he was hired as coach by an Italian ice-cream manufacturer. In Italy there is no seventh-inning stretch, no ice-cold beer in the stands, no national anthem before the game, no big salaries. But there are fans. In Italy, Morgan explains, "the fans throw back all the foul balls and other things—like shoes and sucked-out oranges."
Now it can be told: The reason Lu Liang-huan is so good a golfer (SI, July 19) is that he plays under pretty tough conditions in his native Taiwan. Seems the mainland Chinese fire rockets overhead; the rockets burst open and shower propaganda leaflets all over the place, especially on one of the principal golf courses. But the locals have got a sporting rule for all that: Any leaflet that renders a ball unplayable may be moved without penalty.
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