And Kush Probably Cried, Too

Before the NFL draft in 1983, John Elway made it clear to the Baltimore Colts that he wouldn’t play for them if they drafted him.

Recalling the day of the draft, Elway told Michael Knisley of the Denver Post: “We had a big party in Palo Alto the night before. We got a big suite at a hotel and had 30 or 40 people over and had it catered.

“The draft started at 5 a.m. on the West Coast, so we didn’t even go to bed the night before. After the Colts went ahead and picked me, I talked to Frank Kush on the phone for about 10 minutes, and then I had a press conference.”

And then?

“And then I went home and cried,” he said.

Trivia Time: Tom House, hired this week as the pitching coach of the Texas Rangers, is the answer to what trivia question? (Answer below.)

At the Houston Space Center this week, a group of gymnasts performed some out-of-this-world routines aboard a jet aircraft used in astronaut training to simulate weightlessness.

The day before they performed, the gymnasts took a trial run on the jet while strapped in their seats and blindfolded. All but one got sick.

“Don’t feel bad,” said an officer. “It happens to everyone. That’s how this thing got its nickname.”

Which is?

“The Vomit Comet,” he said.

George Vecsey of the New York Times, on Edmonton Oilers Coach Glen Sather, whom he calls a Renaissance man: “He has accumulated enough acreage in Banff that he coaches only because it’s good fun. He is the best-dressed coach in the league, and he owns intricate cameras to take photographs of safaris to Africa and his vacations in other exotic places.

“Posted in his garage is this sign: He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins.”

Add Oilers: Of owner Peter Pocklington, Vecsey wrote: “Until his boom-or-bust speculating dropped his personal fortune from the billions to the millions in recent years, Pocklington kept a jet plane, a pilot and a personal chef at his 24-hour disposal.”

Added Vecsey: “The Oilers are one of the few winter-sport teams that dare to take quickie vacations in Hawaii or Las Vegas right in the middle of the season. But that is the hedonistic outlook of Pocklington and Sather, conservative in politics but not in life.”

Larry Bird seems to be comfortable with his “hick from French Lick” image, but agent Bob Woolf believes the Boston forward has become more sophisticated than even he realizes.

Woolf, who lives next door to Bird in the Boston suburb of Brookline, told the Christian Science Monitor: “If you think he’s smart on the court, well, that’s the way he is off it. Only sometimes, people don’t think so because of his Hoosier twang and his poor grammar.”

Trivia Answer: Tom House is the answer to the question, “Who caught the record-breaking 715th home run by Henry Aaron.”

House, an Atlanta relief pitcher, was in the bullpen when Aaron connected off Al Downing of the Dodgers to break Babe Ruth’s record in 1974.

Quotebook

Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe, who lost $160 to Larry Bird in a free-throw shooting contest, asked if he will pay it or put it on his expense account: “That’s what we’re negotiating right now.”