PEOPLE

Democrats in Florida's Dade County are looking for a new executive director. One man whose name has been mentioned is Joe Robbie, owner of the Miami Dolphins. Whether he would consent is another question, but he certainly has the right credentials and connections, especially with his party's new presidential nominee. Robbie taught political science with Senator George McGovern at South Dakota Wesleyan, served as minority (Democratic) leader of the South Dakota House and once ran unsuccessfully for governor.

Was Ernest Hemingway really an athletic cipher? Well, not exactly, but a group of his old acquaintances gathered in Paris recently to celebrate the publication of a new book, Hemingway and the Sun Set, and came up with a consensus that the famed author was something less than Superjock. For one thing, said Harold Loeb, a retired writer and model for Robert Cohn in The Sun Also Rises, "Hem was no tennis player, he had bad eyes. He also had a bad leg so that he didn't run up to the net...." As for his boxing prowess, Hemingway "was not the great champion that he was supposed to have been...he signaled his punches," says Loeb. Another old pal from Paris days, Morrill Cody, remembered how Hemingway was always trying to get his bartender, an ex-prizefighter named Jimmy, to box with him. "Jimmy avoided [it] because he said that Hemingway knew nothing about boxing," said Cody. "He was terrified that he would hit him and then he'd lose a client."

Bet you think Ilie Nastase only drives his opponents and officials crazy with his antics on the tennis court. Well, consider what he does to his superior officials in the Rumanian army, where his rank is second lieutenant but might as well be king. His $75,000 annual income is one of the highest in socialist Rumania, he has ordered plans on a comfortable new home in the suburbs and he gets to keep his hair beyond GI length.

"The people at Boeing said they couldn't build my plane now because they're too busy building the 747," said Johnny Stroman of Wayne, Pa. "So I'm going swimming." With that sporting gesture, Stroman turned his back—at least temporarily—on a promising career in aircraft design. Johnny's plane, which he called the Mach 4SR-88A Delta-Wing Jet, so impressed the Boeing people that they offered him a job—before finding out he was only 14. "Everything the kid did added up," said one research official. Even his decision to go swimming.

Politicking has begun in earnest over who will replace Avery Brundage as head of the International Olympic Committee when he retires this fall. The two favorites seem to be Ireland's Lord Killanin, 58, and France's Count Jean de Beaumont. 68, both of whom are used to Olympic heat. The two were involved in separate controversies surrounding the Games recently—Killanin as president of the IOC committee dealing with the South African case and Count de Beaumont when he refused to sign the boycott petition of the French athletes at the Sapporo Winter Games. De Beaumont's campaign, say observers of the Vatican-like IOC electoral process, seems to be more spirited and farther advanced.

Olympic politicking of another sort in Los Angeles. Never-say-die Mayor Sam Yorty of Los Angeles announced last week that he is starting that city's campaign to land the 1980 Games.

Dr. K. Eileen Hite, a New York psychiatrist and president of the city's Boston Terrier Club, said last week that her work with show dogs helps her professionally. "If one observes dogs," she said, "he can learn a great deal about nonverbal communication. This is important and can be adapted, for example, in body language." Like if you come across a patient who enjoys having his stomach scratched?

Inexorably, like a Greek drama, the World Chess Championship moved toward a conclusion in Reykjavik last week with a pair of new characters joining the cast. Mrs. Boris Spassky arrived from Russia to lend encouragement to her husband's faltering cause (the score by Sunday stood at 8-5 in Bobby Fischer's favor). Meanwhile, International Master AI Horowitz, who has been analyzing the games for The New York Times, took ill and was replaced by U.S. co-champion Samuel Reshevsky. And just to keep things lively, Fischer wrote a letter of complaint about noise in the playing hall.

England's Tony Jacklin has had a rose named after him by the Sam McGredy nurseries near Belfast, one of the few times that a flower has borne the name of a sportsman. The Tony Jacklin blossom is coral-colored, has a delicate scent, grows to four feet in height and, says Britain's Daily Express, "makes a splendid garden display."

If Bobby Hull is so rich, how come he still has to take summer jobs? He doesn't. The former Chicago Black Hawk superstar, who signed a $2 million contract to play for Winnipeg of the new WHL starting next year, was practicing for an amateur drivers' race with G.T. Winter, a pacer, at Chicago's Sportsman's Park.

The city of New York, faced with several threatened and real sporting defections, is fighting back. Mayor John Lindsay announced early last week that he wants to establish a City Sports Authority to stem the outward tide of franchises. And the city has acquired the title to 49-year-old Yankee Stadium, which it plans to rehabilitate. By this time next year The House That Ruth Built may be known as The House That Lindsay Repaired.

TWO PHOTOS