Even in Old Days, He Always Had the Final Word

After the U.S. Olympic Committee took him aboard as a troubleshooter, George Steinbrenner revealed that he once took a basketball team to the Soviet Union and won eight out of eight games.

The team was the Cleveland Pipers, a member of the ill-fated American Basketball League, which lasted only one full season, 1961-62. The Pipers were coached by John McLendon, who thereby became the first black to coach a professional basketball team, and it featured guard Dick Barnett, who jumped from the NBA.

McLendon, semi-retired at 72, told Ira Berkow of the New York Times: “Steinbrenner was a typical fan. He’d holler from the stands if he wasn’t happy about this play or that play.

“One time we took two vans to a game in Pittsburgh, and one of the vans broke down. I sent the key players on ahead while I stayed to fix the broken van. When I got to the game near the end of the first half, our team was ahead by 14 points. I told the team, led by Jack Adams, the captain, to keep doing what they were doing.

“At halftime, George, who came on his own, burst into the locker room. He hollered, ‘Who’s coaching this team?’ I said, ‘Can’t you read the scoreboard? What difference does it make at this point?’ Then I asked him to leave. I had told him there were two areas of the city he doesn’t belong in, the bench and the locker room.”

Later that season, McLendon was fired.

Add McLendon: He was moved up to director of player personnel and replaced as coach by Bill Sharman who took the team to the league title, thus assuring himself of trivia immortality. Sharman is the only man to coach teams to titles in the ABL (Cleveland Pipers), ABA (Utah Stars) and NBA (Lakers).

Trivia Time: Name the only four players who have averaged 100 runs batted in a season the last 10 years. (Answer below).

He’s the game’s most celebrated three-point shooter, but Larry Bird says, “I don’t like it. I like the game the way it used to be, when a basket was worth two points, no matter where you shot from. If it was up to me, I’d get rid of it.”

Peter May of the Hartford Courant asked him about the NBA three-point contest, which Bird has won three times for a total of $35,000.

“Oh, I’d keep that,” he said.

Said Michael Jordan, when asked if he has any superstitions: “I always wear navy blue North Carolina practice shorts under my uniform for good luck.”

Rafael Santana, traded to the New York Yankees after 3 1/2 season with the Mets, claims that Met Manager Davey Johnson mishandled his bullpen by giving too much work to Roger McDowell and not enough to Jesse Orosco.

“Roger has shown two years in a row he’s not a second-half pitcher,” Santana told Tom Verducci of Newsday. “He has a great first half, then gets tired. Believe it or not, if Davey had used Jesse, we might have won. Jesse went 15 days without pitching at all. Jesse’s the kind of guy who needs work. That wasn’t good for him psychologically.”

From Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe: “Cardinal players don’t miss Jack Clark’s personality and wonder how the slugger will hold up under the pressures of the big city.”

Trivia Answer: Jim Rice 1,037, Mike Schmidt 1,031, Eddie Murray 1,018, Dave Winfield 1,007.

Quotebook

Dick Williams, manager of the Seattle Mariners: “I don’t manage by The Book because I’ve never met the guy who wrote it.”