Home-Cooking, but Not Home

It seems that every time you see a picture of Soviet athletes eating in this country, they’re doing it in one of those fast-food emporiums.

This bothered Cathryn Wood of Springfield, Ill. She figured the Soviets deserved some real American home-cooking, so when the Soviet basketball team came to town to face Illinois State this week she treated them to a specially prepared dinner.

The menu consisted of baked ham, Texas casserole potatoes, marinated carrots, meatballs, apple pie and vanilla ice cream.

After the Soviets had finished, one of the players, Sergei Grishaev, was asked what American food he liked best.

“Kentucky Fried Chicken,” he said.

Power-of-suggestion Dept.: After the New York Jets lost to the Indianapolis Colts last Sunday, somebody suggested that Coach Joe Walton might be looking to make some changes.

“He might look at me first,” said running back Freeman McNeil.

He did. The new starter is Johnny Hector.

Idle thought: As long as the Raiders are experimenting with plays that combine Marcus Allen and Bo Jackson in the same backfield, why don’t they put Jim Plunkett at quarterback? It wouldn’t guarantee a win, but it would make history. It would be football’s first all-Heisman backfield.

Trivia Time: Who can jump higher, a human or a horse? (Answer below).

Take-your-choice Dept.: Alabama, which faces LSU tonight in a game that will be carried by ESPN, is 7-0-1 in its last eight visits to Tiger Stadium. In eight appearances on ESPN, LSU is 8-0.

Add LSU: Coach Mike Archer said Victor Jones would play even though the Tiger fullback was arrested this week for driving his car 123 m.p.h. on a Louisiana highway.

Explained Archer: “He told me he was trying to get some bad gas out of his tank. He had just bought two dollars worth of gas, and his car wasn’t running right. I believe him.”

If they can find him some good gas, they should enter him at Indy.

Utah Jazz forward Karl Malone, after undergoing a summer weight program, is talking about becoming a Mr. Olympia, but Coach Frank Layden has bigger plans.

“I’d like him to fight Mike Tyson,” Layden told Mike Kahn of The Sporting News. “I’d be his manager. We’d go to Vegas for six weeks and do the whole shtick. We’d get the $10 million in one night, and we’d both retire, win or lose.”

After a couple of tipped Phil Simms passes undid the New York Giants against the Dallas Cowboys Monday night, Doug Flutie told the New York Times: “Not a word was mentioned about Simms not being tall enough. If that had happened to me, that’s all they would have been talking about.”

Flutie, now with the New England Patriots, quarterbacked the Chicago Bears to a 24-10 win over Dallas last season.

“I didn’t have any balls deflected,” he said. “If I saw a hand or a body, I sidestepped and reloaded. I just stood in there.”

Trivia Answer: A human. Patrik Sjoberg of Sweden holds the world record at 7 feet 11 inches. The record for a horse is 7-7 1/2.

Quotebook

St. Louis Cardinals Manager Whitey Herzog, on his .258 batting average as a center fielder for the Washington Senators: “I was playing between Roy Sievers and Jim Lemon. By the time I got to bat, I was too tired to hit.”