PEOPLE
The Warriors, not one of the shortest basketball teams around, logically went to the Rochester Clothing Store in San Francisco, perhaps the best-known big-men's outfitter in the Weft, to get new threads. To make sure that 6'11" Nate Thurmond, 6'7" Rick Barry and the like were well taken care of, owner Jerry Moskovitz personally did the fitting. Moskovitz, stretching, is 5'3".
At Jacksonville Speedway, stock-car driver Wayne Shugart got tangled up with Frank Brantley and ended up spinning off the track and out of second place. After the race he drove directly to NASCAR Chief Steward Bob Smeltzer, jumped out and asked, "Is it a $100 fine for lighting in the pits?" Smeltzer said that was the tariff. Shugart pulled $100 out of his pocket, stuck it in Smeltzer's hand, ran 20 yards to where Brantley had parked, and landed a solid right on his chin.
After winning $320,000 in a sports pool, Maggie Smith of Manchester, England, who has spent 26 years pushing a fruit-and-vegetable cart through Market Street, was on easy street. She entered the pool only because her husband Jim forgot to fill his coupon one week and telephoned her to do it for him. Granny Smith, as she is known, won $16 for an investment of pennies, then staked half of it on the jackpot. "I didn't tell James what I had done and felt horrible because it's the first secret Eve kept from him in 22 years," she said.
Bobby Arthur, looking calm considering the circumstances, is the new welterweight king of Britain. Arthur, a Coventry discotheque owner, won the title by a knockout—his own. Opponent John H. Stracey, who considers himself a kind of reincarnation of John L. Sullivan, knocked Arthur unconscious in the seventh round. But with Arthur still on the cam as. the referee ruled that the final blow had landed illegally on the break. As Arthur came to, he groggily learned that he was the new champ. It must be some kind of record.
Dave Butz, Purdue's enormous defensive tackle, did his best to help out his uncle, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz (who resigned with the rest of President Nixon's Cabinet last week), and any number of nameless farmers. "Those head-on collisions make me hungry," the 279-pound, 6'7" Butz says. "I go on these binges where I can't get enough to eat. I go to a smorgasbord and make up for all the little old ladies who eat there." Perhaps his most memorable meal was one laid on by his high school track coach in Park Ridge. Ill. who had promised him unlimited eats if he won the Illinois discus championship. Butz did, setting a state record of 180'4", then sat down to a repast featuring a steak so big it had to be cooked in two skillets, a huge heap of onion rings, countless rolls, four sundaes and seven soft drinks. "I even had the nerve to ask for pie," Butz admits, "but the coach thought I'd had enough." Since he usually skips breakfast, however, and has only a couple of sandwiches for lunch, he insists that "On the whole my little sisters probably eat more than I do."
Fayne Limbo is not somebody lost in the shuffle. He is a very good quarterback for Middle Tennessee State University, which is a strong contender for the Ohio Valley Conference championship.
Ben Davidson, the Oakland Raider who invented the mustache long before Charles O. Finley did, was left with his mouth wide open recently. An ad agency asked him to do a commercial for a new toothpaste that is supposed to brighten both teeth and dentures, the assumption being that Davidson, like most footballers, was missing a few. Honest Ben admitted that he had all 32 teeth, clean, white and original. "But when I heard the deal was in five figures, I was tempted to ask my dentist to pull a few," he said.
Apparently all that havoc Dallas Cowboy Linebacker Dave Edwards wreaks on the football field is hereditary. Edwards' sons Chris, age three, and Mike, two, are already double-teaming Gail Edwards. "Mike covered his entire body and his hair with diaper-rash ointment," she says. "He looked like Casper The Ghost, completely white. I rubbed him with a towel and put him in soapy water and it just didn't come off. The stuff had cod-liver oil in it and was waterproof. Horrible. And just the other day Chris sprayed our motorcycles gold all over. Two expensive motorcycles on a trailer. They're always doing rotten things. Eve found the safest thing is to send them outside and lock the door."
Suffering through a dismal 2-6-1 season, the Philadelphia Eagles have just now got an idea how bad they really might be. Erstwhile fan Alexander N. Rubin Jr., on behalf of himself. Howard Bacon, Joseph Berenato, Boyer Veitch "and 60,000 other fans" is suing the Eagles for gross nonperformance. Their suit describes the Eagles as "inept, amateurish, lacking in effort and far below the level of a professional football performance expected of a National Football League team." On this ground, they charge breach of contract and demand a refund for their season tickets.
TWO PHOTOS