PEOPLE
Washington Redskin Quarterback Sonny Jurgensen is going back to school—a school for drinking drivers. That's the only penalty assigned to him after he was arrested on charges of intoxicated driving and jailed for half an hour when he refused to take a breath test. The charges were dropped on Dec. 21 at the request of Prince George's (Md.) County State's Attorney Arthur Marshall. Marshall admitted he might have been influenced by "the Christmas spirit or the forthcoming game on Sunday with the Green Bay Packers." State Trooper Robert Cromwell, who made the arrest, said, "It's been a pain in the neck and I'm glad it's over." What really hurt: Cromwell is a Baltimore Colt fan.
Kiou Jalayer, a 30-year-old Iranian currently an employee at a Lake Tahoe resort hotel, was arrested for running a red light. The cop was following the letter, if not the spirit, of the law. A former Olympic marathon contestant, Jalayer ran the light on foot.
The Otis Taylor Book must be one of the few school texts stolen in any numbers, and probably the only remedial reader. The recently published aid for slow readers, built around conversations with the Kansas City Chiefs' wide receiver, consistently turns up missing in the Kansas City school system. "I'm glad the book is being stolen," Taylor says, and the schools' reading consultant, Joanne Beebe, is even happier. "It's a hero-figure approach," she says. The book itself encourages such identification. McGuffey-like, Taylor advises readers to mind their parents but adds, "If you don't have a parent who cares, pick up an idol. Otis Taylor doesn't come from a rich family. I lived in a project that's twice as bad as any you may know about. So it's not where you come from. You have to have 'the will to do.' And you have to form the will within yourself, if there's no help from others."
Sequels to popular stories seldom turn out the way one would like. Gil Hodges Jr., son of the late manager, has quietly been granted his release by the Mets' Pompano farm team. Young Hodges hit only .196 and four home runs. Earlier, the Mets' Batavia team had released Larry Berra Jr., Yogi's son. Maybe it will be different with Pitcher Mark Tanner, signed by the Chicago Cubs. His father is Chuck Tanner, who is, after all, manager of the Chicago White Sox.
Wyoming Basketball Coach Bill Strannigan's frame of mind was something less than happy. Idaho State had poured it on his Cowboys, even with subs in the game. One of them was Strannigan's own son Matt, a freshman, who not only made two nice passes setting up baskets, but after State had won 70-51 went into deep consultation with his father. Consolation? Sympathy? Nope. "He asked me for 20 bucks to catch up on his laundry bills before Christmas vacation," Strannigan said.
Covering the Chicago Bears can be a physically punishing experience. George (Mugs) Halas Jr., president of the Bears, got so upset when a potential Chicago touchdown pass was deflected that he leaped up and pounded the wall of his private booth. The booth happens to be adjacent to the Soldier Field press box, and the impact jarred a TV monitor off a shelf onto the head of Ed Sainsbury, a reporter for UPI. Bleeding profusely from a scalp wound, Sainsbury heroically stayed on the job for the game's final minutes to file his story. Only then did he retreat to Mercy Hospital's emergency room, where five stitches were required to close the wound. The blow also bruised Sainsbury's chest when it knocked him forward onto the press table. Sainsbury had just been beginning to feel better after major heart surgery.
New York Jet Cornerback Steve Tannen may be a mean man on the field, but off it he writes children's books. A forthcoming one, The Bleeper and the Regs, which sounds a little like a story about referees throwing out a player for unnecessary language, is actually a nonsense poem. So is Tannen's recent work entitled Lollipop:
I hate to be a lollipop
perched upon a stick,
hands and arms extended
for someone's lousy lick.
I'd rather he a roller skate
with someone else to follow.
At least I'd be a major
chore for anyone to swallow.
Billy Mills, the American Indian who staged that dramatic upset in the 10,000-meter run of the 1964 Olympics, well recalls being poor and Indian when poverty and red skins were unfashionable. So, at age 34, Mills is running the Division of Recreation, Physical Education and Athletics of the Bureau of Indian Affairs—a division created by Mills. Mills has already-opened a Hall of Fame that has inducted, among others, such Indian athletes of the past as Allie Reynolds, Chief Bender and Jim Thorpe. He has put on a 10-state Indian invitational cross-country meet, and he plans annual championships in basketball and football. "Everybody tells the young Indian to be proud, but nobody ever tells him what to be proud about," Mills says. "We want them to combine the positives of sports with the strength and beauty of past Indian philosophy."
Arnold Palmer was in Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania capital, for a tennis—repeat, tennis—exhibition, and it seemed a good time to discuss widespread rumors about another possible nongolf activity. Palmer has often been mentioned as a conceivable Republican candidate for governor. "What we need is someone who is interested in the state and not in himself," Palmer said. "We need someone who would just generally take a look at the state without selfish thoughts." Arnie claimed he wasn't saying the present governor hadn't ever done this, "but politics are too much involved in our state." Concerning his own plans, the Latrobe, Pa. resident said only, "I guess everyone has had political thoughts. I've thought about the governorship but I've never given it very serious thought. But you never know." For a non-politician, that's a fairly noncommittal answer, Arnie.
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