Pennant for Kremlin? Not Nyet

Pravda, the Communist Party’s daily newspaper in the Soviet Union, has posed some questions about the announcement that the country will take up baseball, the newest Olympic sport.

“Do we need baseball?” asked a rhetorical headline in Wednesday’s editions.

The answer: We’re not sure.

“I don’t want to say that it is impossible to achieve, but before world-class players appear here, it is evident baseball should become a mass kind of sport,” read the story by Lev Levedev. “It is here that I see a problem.”

He suggested that official Soviet sports bodies concentrate on more established sports--soccer, volleyball and basketball--the quality of which he said has been slipping in recent years.

Baseball gloves, spikes and baseballs are not made in the Soviet Union, Levedev pointed out, questioning the wisdom of grooming baseball diamonds when more fields are needed for the immensely popular game of soccer.

Besides, the story added, chances of a Soviet team winning an Olympic medal over experienced American, Latin American and Japanese players will be slim for years.

“But still, how should we consider baseball?” Levedev asked. “In my opinion, it is an interesting game, and let its fate in our sport be a happy one--but not at the expense of other kinds of sports.”

Especially motoball?

Trivia Time: Which World Series game has drawn the most American television viewers? (Answer below).

Rookie guard Maurice Martin, a starter in the Denver Nuggets’ first exhibition game, has been demoted to 12th man because of what Coach Doug Moe called Martin’s awful play.

“He’s our worst player right now,” Moe said. “He’s below everybody. We’re going to drop him all the way to the bottom. Now, he’s basically our 12th man, and he’ll have to work his way back up. With his talent, he can do it.”

Somehow, you get the idea that Martin won’t stay at the bottom long and is in no danger of getting cut since he is Denver’s No. 1 draft choice.

The Green Monster isn’t that bad: In 1950, Billy Martin visited Fenway Park for the first time. He walked out to the left-field wall before the game, dressed in a zoot suit, and started jumping up and down, saying: “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”

Then he doubled halfway up the wall in his first major league at-bat.

Had Jack Nicklaus II played the 190-yard, par-3 ninth hole in par during Thursday’s opening round of the $238,000 Lancome Trophy tournament at Paris, he would have been in second place with a 68.

It didn’t work out that way.

His 4-iron shot off the tee caught the fringe of the green and rolled into a pond. Young Nicklaus dropped out and hit the ball back into the water. Then he did it again. He finally chipped to the back of the green and two-putted for a 9.

He finished the round with a 74, in 24th place, seven strokes behind leader Seve Ballesteros of Spain.

Daddy must have told him there’d be days like this.

Trivia Answer: Game 6 of the 1981 World Series between the Dodgers and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium Oct. 28, drew an estimated 77,660,000 viewers. The Dodgers trounced the Yankees, 9-2, to win the Series. Note: The sixth, and final game of the 1980 Series, in which Philadelphia beat Kansas City, 4-1, had a higher Nielsen rating, 40.0 to 37.2, but 290,000 fewer viewers.

Quotebook

Iowa Coach Hayden Fry, upset after canceling football practice because 43 players, including 15 starters, were injured: “When I’m like this, I don’t have any friends. I don’t even want to see my dog.”