Schottenheimer Won’t Let Wounded Ducks Ruffle His Feathers

Cleveland Browns quarterback Gary Danielson, coming off shoulder surgery, wasn’t throwing the prettiest of spirals in a workout Saturday, but Coach Marty Schottenheimer didn’t seem to be worried.

“I always go back and think of Billy Kilmer and those end-over-end passes when I was coaching with the Giants and he was with the Redskins,” Schottenheimer said. “The ball would be turning so slow, you could read Pete Rozelle’s name on the side.”

At the Goodwill Games, Skip Myslenski of the Chicago Tribune said he overheard this exchange between an American mother and her son:

Mother: “Look, son, there’s Lenin’s tomb?”

Son: “John Lennon’s?”

Trivia Time: Willie McCovey today will become the third player who finished his career with the San Francisco Giants to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Name the other two. (Answer below.)

53 Years Ago Today: On Aug. 3, 1933, Lefty Grove of the Philadelphia A’s became the first pitcher since Aug. 2, 1931, a span of 309 games, to shut out the New York Yankees, beating them, 7-0.

Saturday marked the 46th anniversary of the introduction of a yellow baseball to major league baseball. The ball was the brainchild of Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Larry MacPhail, who thought it would be easier to see. It was used in a 6-2 win over the Chicago Cubs at Ebbets Field. It was used only twice more.

That recalls what Bob Uecker had to say when asked what he thought of the possibility of using yellow baseballs.

“The only problem,” he said, “would be finding enough jaundiced horses to keep up the supply.”

Noting that Woody Hayes called his 1968 Ohio State team, with 16 sophomores, the best he ever coached, a reader wondered how those Buckeyes did as seniors.

In 1970, they were undefeated until they got to the Rose Bowl. There, Jim Plunkett and Stanford beat them, 27-17.

Paying-the-price Dept.: Jane Fredrick, former U.S. record-holder in the heptathlon, tells Track & Field News why she is sidelined: “I wrenched my back moving a transplanted tree. I was working as a gardener for the City of Santa Barbara. I had to get a job because I bought a house.”

Watson Brown, new football coach at Vanderbilt, comes to Nashville from Houston, where he was 4-18 the last two years at Rice.

He recalls being stopped by a policeman while he was driving home from a Rice loss: “At first he didn’t know who I was, Watson Brown not being a big name in Houston, and started writing me a traffic ticket. Then he noticed my coach’s shirt.

“ ‘Oh, you’re the Watson Brown who coaches Rice,’ the policeman told me. Then he tore up the ticket, saying ‘I can’t give you this. You’ve got enough troubles already.’ ”

Would-you-believe-it Dept.: Among Saturday’s inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Fran Tarkenton had more career rushing yards than Doak Walker and almost as many as Paul Hornung.

Hornung had 3,711 yards, Tarkenton 3,674 and Walker 1,520.

Former National League umpire Augie Donatelli told The Sporting News: “The best manager I ever saw in terms of knowing the rule book was Gene Mauch. He had that son of a gun memorized. Then you had Leo Durocher, who only thought he knew it.”

Trivia Answer: Warren Spahn and Duke Snider.

Quotebook

Val Skinner of the LPGA Tour, on life’s three verities: “Death, taxes and Pat Bradley’s name on the leader board.”