PEOPLE

Jim Palmer, the handsome Orioles 20-game winner, made almost $5,000 when he filmed his last commercial for hair cream. Considering the employment situation in major league baseball, the prospect of more jobs should make his wife Susie very happy. But after she saw the commercial she told Palmer he would have to clear all future movie commitments with her. It seems she was not too pleased by the proximity of her husband to a pretty actress in the commercial's closing moments. "Susie surprised me," remarked Palmer recently. "I figured she'd put money before principle."

Ring officials in South Oxhey, England were convinced they had a boxing prodigy on their hands in 12-year-old Jackie Fuller, who had a terrific punch. Then it turned out that Jackie was short not for John, but for Jacqueline, and—punch or no punch—she had to go. Still, said her coach, Bill Green, "That girl is the best boy I've ever trained."

San Francisco's intelligentsia have discovered Roller Derby. Elsa Cameron, curator of the art school at the city's De Young Memorial Museum, has included a Bay Bomber helmet in an exhibit called "Changing Faces" which opened at the museum last week. The idea was to contrast the headgear of ancient and modern tribes, and the acquisition prompted Roller Derby Commissioner Jerry Seltzer to an excess of ardor. "I am delighted," he said, "that Ms. Cameron has the perception to realize the cultural and sociological implications of a Bomber helmet...."

Still on his own strike against Oakland A's Owner Charles Finley, Pitcher Vida Blue blew into New York last week to sign up for another career, in case his other two—baseball and public relations—begin to pall. Here he is with Actor Richard Roundtree (right) after Blue signed for a role in a forthcoming Shaft film in which Roundtree will star. That thing they're examining is not an Over-John.

The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs has announced plans for the establishment of an American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame, to be located at Haskell Indian Junior College, Lawrence, Kans. The man who did the announcing was an American Indian athlete of distinction, Billy Mills, who won the 10,000-meter run in the 1964 Olympics—the only American ever to capture the event. Mills is now assistant to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Louis R. Bruce. One of the prime goals of the Hall of Fame will be to restore the 1912 Olympic medals that were stripped from Jim Thorpe.

Darrell Royal had a hoedown at his place in Austin the other day, which is not really such a surprise, since the Texas football coach is a longtime devotee of foot-stompin' music. The gathering included many of the top names in country and Western music. The session was a kind of postscript to the Dripping Springs Reunion, a three-day C&W festival. Afterward Royal asked the artists to come by, and among those who did were Red Lane, Charlie and Margaret Ann Rich, Waylon Jennings, Rita Coolidge, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson. Royal ran things like a Longhorn practice session, imposing on his guests a strict rule of silence while the musicians were playing and whistling down any violations.

The world now has a square-ball golf champion, Leading Airman Fred Ryan of Britain's commando carrier, H.M.S. Albion. The game was invented by Albion crewmen after they found, not surprisingly, that ordinary golf balls kept rolling off the flight deck. Somebody carved up some square wooden ones and tried hitting them with hockey sticks. Now the players club their golf cubes around a sporty little course with hazards made of ship's machinery. Airman Ryan clattered around in 42. Said Commander A. S. Watt, "The ball flew fairly straight until it hit a ringbolt...."

When Pam Van Hatten tells her husband Tom, an Arlington, Texas welterweight, that she is in his corner, she isn't employing a figure of speech. She has been working as his second for the last six months, and the arrangement seems to be paying off. Van Hatten hasn't lost a fight since his wife took over the smelling salts, and even the boxing purists who were apprehensive about her shapely presence at ringside are beginning to come around because lately she has turned out to be something of a drawing card. "I figured Pam was just another dumb blonde," said her grateful husband, "but she picked up the fight game quickly."

You might call it a divorce in name only. Officials of the Hazel Park racecourse in Detroit decreed that Jockeys Mary and Johnny Bacon could not remain married and continue to ride at their oval. Reason: in case of a protest or claim against one of them, the other couldn't be forced to testify. This legal technicality cost the Bacons several mounts, and now it has cost them their marriage. But since they both loved their careers as well as each other, they decided to accept the divorce decree and continue riding.

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