He’s Not a Model Player

Manager Whitey Herzog of the St. Louis Cardinals figures that Tito Landrum’s divorce in 1986 marked the start of his decline as a ballplayer.

Landrum recently signed a minor league contract with the Texas Rangers after having been released by three teams in a span of 10 months--the Cardinals, the Dodgers and the Baltimore Orioles.

Said Herzog of Landrum after the divorce: “Then he became a male model and was worried about the way he looked all the time.

“There would always be a good-looking blonde sitting behind our dugout and she’d be with Tito.

“One time I needed a right-handed pinch-hitter and he was blowing kisses to the stands.

“My only right-handed pinch-hitter.”

Ayako Okamoto, leading money-winner on the women’s pro golf tour last year, is a national phenomenon in Japan.

She told the Wall Street Journal: “When I’m in Tokyo, reporters wait outside my house all day. When I come out, they ask me what I’m doing inside. I tell them I sleep, eat and watch TV, and they write it down. I can’t go outside without them following.”

Even in the United States, they follow. After the final round of the U.S. Women’s Open was rained out last year, Japanese reporters kept her in the interview room for an hour. “And after a rainout!” she marveled.

Add Okamoto: She’s 36 and didn’t even see a golf course until she was 20. That was on a trip to Hawaii. She wondered “why there were flags in a nice lawn.”

Former tennis star Vitas Gerulaitis, who recently appeared as a guest with the Canadian rock group, Bachman Turner Overdrive, at a Stockholm concert, said he’d like to form a band of tennis pros.

“Mats Wilander, for instance, is playing really well. But I doubt that John McEnroe would be in the band. He can’t play on more than one string at a time.”

No-Comment Dept.: Hulk Hogan, former World Wrestling Federation heavyweight champion, was chosen male athlete of the year on the Nickelodeon Television Network’s “Kid’s Choice” show. Hogan, who lost his title to Randy (Macho Man) Savage in a controversial match, managed to outpoll the National Basketball Assn.’s Michael Jordan and the National Football League’s Walter Payton.

It-Had-to-Happen Dept.: Dressing-room interviews, with live cameras circulating among players just out of the shower, always did seem risky. And the inevitable finally occurred.

Houston television station KHOU-TV, doing a postgame interview from the Dallas Mavericks’ dressing room, inadvertently showed a moment of frontal nudity. But the station was not exactly flooded with protests. In fact, there were only two calls, and neither a complaint. Sports director Gifford Nielsen reported: “All they said was, ‘Hey, who was that guy?’ ”

Quotebook

Hall of Fame golfer Ben Hogan, 76: “I dreamed one time--and this sounds crazy--I dreamed that I made 17 holes-in-one, and on the 18th hole, I lipped the cup and I was just madder than hell.”