Bill’s Bulk Is the Bane of His Season

Former Ram tackle Bill Bain, now with the New York Jets, has been working out with the team but has yet to get into a game.

Coach Joe Walton said Bain won’t be used until he slims down to a specific playing weight.

“We’re giving him time to work into shape,” Walton told Greg Logan of Newsday. “The first step is that he registers on our scale.”

Bain reportedly weighs 310.

Manute Bol, 7-7 center for the Washington Bullets who led the NBA in blocked shots last season, has gained 32 pounds, up from 198 to 230.

Bol underwent a summer weight-gaining program directed by Mackie Shilstone, the New Orleans nutritionist who made a heavyweight out of Michael Spinks.

“We put him on 6,500 calories a day,” Shilstone said. “He had ribs, chicken and so many Rock Cornish game hens, I’m surprised he didn’t fly away.”

Add Forgettable Quotes: Said Mac O’Grady last March after being fined by PGA Commissioner Deane Beman: “I’ll rot in hell before I pay a cent. I’m takin’ ‘em all on. They better be real careful now. I’ll take them to court and sue them for millions. Golf needs a congressional investigation. I’ll never give in to them. If I have to die, I will die.”

O’Grady dropped his suit Tuesday.

Trivia Time: Name the only player who has hit 40 or more home runs in both the National and American Leagues. (Answer below.)

Just Asking: Wonder if the New York fans who complained that Vin Scully was biased against the Mets know that he is a native New Yorker who used to root for Mel Ott and went to Fordham?

Scully told Stan Isaacs of Newsday: “New York has changed from the days when I worked Brooklyn Dodger games here. The papers--the Post and News, I suppose--have become so provincial, I think it affects people; it rubs off on the fans and whips them up into a frenzy they didn’t have before. New York used to be above that. I remember when New York writers sneered at writers from other towns who rooted openly for their teams. They called it ‘bush.’ Now, I hear that New York writers root openly in the press box.”

Add Newsday: Marty Noble, who covered the Mets all year for the paper, missed the seventh game of the World Series because his wife was giving birth to a daughter, Lindsay Marie. The girl’s weight?

The same as the score, 8-5.

The word was that the St. Louis Cardinals would get tough this season under Gene Stallings, one-time disciple of Bear Bryant, but Dallas linebacker Jeff Rohrer had this to say after the Cowboys took them apart, 37-6, Sunday: “They started lying down in the first part of the second quarter, and no team should do that.”

Indiana Pacer guard Clint Richardson was longing for the old days in Philadelphia after being required to meet a certain time in a mile run ordered by Coach Jack Ramsay.

“Philadelphia was more lenient,” Richardson said. “We just had to keep running until we finished. We called it the Darryl Dawkins Memorial Mile because it used to take him a week.”

Trivia Answer: Darrell Evans. He hit 41 for Atlanta in 1973 and 40 for Detroit in 1985.

Quotebook

Detroit Piston Coach Chuck Daly, saying the only problem with 7-foot rookie John Salley is an inflated ego: “Right now he’s on a starvation diet as far as praise goes.”