First Year for Mets Was No Honeymoon

Richie Ashburn, two-time National League batting champion who closed out his career with the 1962 New York Mets, has a story in The Sporting News on the team, a woeful bunch who finally drove Manager Casey Stengel to ask, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

Wrote Ashburn of the first week, which started with a loss at St. Louis: “Sports Illustrated had assigned a young writer to travel with the team so the magazine could record the first win in Mets history. The writer had just married his high school sweetheart in New York City and virtually had to leave his bride at the altar to catch his flight to St. Louis.

“After a week of losses, the writer told Casey he would get to see his bride after the Mets won their first game. Casey told the writer, ‘I hate to tell you this, but you might not get to see her until October.’ ”

In his senior year at Jackson State, Walter Payton and his girlfriend took second place in a televised “Soul Train” dance contest. His coach, Bob Hill, told Esquire magazine that Payton would dance before games just to get in the mood.

“The whole team would be standing in the parking lot on campus waiting for the bus to the stadium,” Hill said. “Some guys would start playing music, and Walter would dance for a good half hour sometimes. He’d put pads on, jump up, and land on his elbows and knees. He’d do flips and everything.

“He was only pumping himself up, but it scared me. I couldn’t stand to watch. You know, he still swears that if he’d had a girl who could dance better, he could have won that contest.”

Trivia Time: What Heisman Trophy winner had a nickname that was synonymous with the nickname of the NFL team that drafted him? Hint: He galloped 79 yards for a touchdown on his first NFL carry. (Answer below.)

Would-you-believe-it Dept.: Here’s an LPGA press release, which no doubt left a lot of people shaking their heads: “Richard W. Kazmaier of Concord, MA., has been appointed to the LPGA Board of Directors to serve a three-year term. Kazmaier is president of Kazmaier Associates, Inc., a marketing and financial services business specializing in sports, leisure, health and fitness industries. A graduate of Princeton University in psychology and an MBA from Harvard University, Kazmaier joins the Board in January 1987.”

Maybe the LPGA doesn’t know it, or maybe it doesn’t think it’s important, but Richard W. Kazmaier is known to most of us as Dick Kazmaier, the 1951 Heisman Trophy winner at Princeton.

Add Kazmaier: The last Ivy Leaguer to win the Heisman, he never played pro football. Remarkably, three of the also-rans in the Heisman voting that year--Hugh McElhenny of Washington, Ollie Matson of San Francisco and Frank Gifford of USC--already are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

New York Giants Coach Bill Parcells, on 6-4, 245-pound tight end Mark Bavaro, who has been called Rambo and Tarzan by his teammates: “Mark is not All-World, but he might be All-Jungle.”

Trivia Answer: Alan (the Horse) Ameche of the Baltimore Colts. He won the Heisman Trophy at Wisconsin in 1954. Considered by some to be too ponderous and slow for the NFL, he quieted the critics in his first game in 1955 when he gained 194 yards in 21 carries as the Colts beat the Chicago Bears, 23-17.

Quotebook

Richie Ashburn, on Yale graduate Ken McKenzie, a pitcher for the 1962 New York Mets: “He had Whitey Ford’s pitches and Edsel Ford’s luck.”