The Place Echoes His Gripe

Author Roger Angell, who writes about baseball the way Norman Rockwell painted it, paid his first visit to the high-tech Kingdome this month.

“Isn’t that kind of like St. Peter entering hell,” one joker in the press box said.

Angell, author of many books on baseball and a writer and editor at The New Yorker, sat in the stands as one of the 9,970 fans. He took notes and kept score--and watched, rather quizzically, the video sailboat races on the scoreboard.

His impressions of the Kingdome?

“I don’t want to complain about it because it’s been here a long time. . . .,” he told Sarah Smith of the Seattle Times. “The worst thing about it is the sound. It has a terrible echo.

“I like it better than the Metrodome (in Minneapolis). Of course, that isn’t saying much. It’s kind of like saying you like influenza better than beriberi.”

Trivia Time: Besides Babe Ruth, who is the only player to hit more than 500 home runs and also win a game as a pitcher in the majors? (Answer below).

The Mets and the Yankees are both off to good starts, so you knew it was only a matter of time before talk of a Subway Series in October started in New York.

Many players on the Yankees seemed to like the idea, but pitcher Rick Rhoden, for one, made it clear that he could do without it. Or maybe New York itself could do without it.

“I wouldn’t want to see it,” Rhoden told Tom Verducci of Newsday. “The city couldn’t handle it. It would be too dangerous. It’d be crazy. This city can’t handle it when one team gets in. I wouldn’t mind playing them, but only if we could do it somewhere else.

“Sure, we wouldn’t have to travel far. We’d just have to get around by armored truck.”

Butch Reynolds of Ohio State has run the fastest non-altitude 400 meters in track history. That’s not to say he has made a big impact for his sport on the football-crazy campus.

“As soon as track season is over, the temporary bleachers go over the track at Ohio Stadium, and I can find somewhere else to train,” said Reynolds, who will compete in an invitational meet at UCLA June 5.

“And, you may recall, I had to take out a loan for tuition when I enrolled at Ohio State.”

William (the Refrigerator) Perry rolled into a mini-camp with the Chicago Bears the other day weighing 377 pounds. “I ain’t in the best shape ever,” Perry conceded. Coach Mike Ditka concurred and said Perry must get down to 320 by the July 21 opening of training camp.

Perry said he has spent the off-season “running, fishing and spending time with the wife and kids.”

He also said he is not making as many commercial appearances on television these days, but he has other ambitions.

“There are a couple of movie offers that are on hold. Who knows, someday you might see me in pictures.”

Wide screen, no doubt.

Trivia answer: Jimmie Foxx hit 534 home runs and was 1-0 as a pitcher in nine games for the 1939 Boston Red Sox and the 1945 Philadelphia Phillies.

Quotebook

Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Andy Van Slyke, when asked if there was anyone on earth he’d like to trade places with: “My wife, so I could see how wonderful it is to live with me.”