Bush Has at Least One Vote

Was Rod Dedeaux putting somebody on, or was he just trying to be diplomatic?

The former USC baseball coach has always been generous in his comments, but he outdid himself when asked what he thought of Yale first baseman George Bush when the Trojans beat the Elis in the 1948 College World Series.

“He was an excellent fielder and a tough out,” Dedeaux told the New York Times. “I’d put him on my all-opponent team, which means he was pretty good.”

Among the first basemen Dedeaux’s teams faced were Chris Chambliss (UCLA), Tim Wallach (Cal State Fullerton), Alvin Davis (Arizona State), Wally Joyner (Brigham Young) and Mike Aldrete (Stanford).

Ouch: From a column on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar by Peter May of the Hartford Courant: “Wilt Chamberlain, hardly an objective observer (he loathes Kareem), but a qualified one, ripped Abdul-Jabbar in a recent Esquire interview.

“ ‘You know what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar does best? He makes money,’ Chamberlain said. ‘He’s a lucky man to be playing with Magic Johnson, James Worthy and Michael Cooper because if he wasn’t, he’d have been out of here a long time ago.’ ”

8 Years Ago Today: On June 20, 1980, Freddie Patek, 5-foot 5-inch shortstop, hit three home runs and a double to lead the Angels to a 20-2 rout of the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.

Would-you-believe-it dept.: Detroit Pistons center James Edwards, as a rookie with the Lakers in 1977-78, was leading the team in scoring after replacing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who broke his hand in the opener when he slugged the Milwaukee Bucks’ Kent Benson.

When Abdul-Jabbar returned, Edwards was traded to the Indiana Pacers in a deal that brought Adrian Dantley to the Lakers.

“I remember going on a road trip to New Orleans when the Jazz were still playing there,” Edwards told Alan Goldstein of the Baltimore Sun. “All I packed was a sweater and loafers. As soon as the plane touched down in Louisiana, they told me I’d been traded to the Pacers and gave me another ticket to Indianapolis. This time I get off the plane and there’s snow up to my waist. I thought, ‘How can this be happening to me?’ ”

Trivia Time: What do Risen Star and outfielder Mike Yastrzemski of Vancouver of the Pacific Coast League have in common? (Answer below.)

By any name or at any age, Anne Sander is quite a golfer. Sander, 50, won the Women’s Western Amateur Saturday 32 years after winning it for the first time as 18-year-old Anne Quast in 1956.

As Anne Quast, she also won the USGA Women’s Amateur in 1958. In 1961, she won it as Anne Quast Decker. In 1963, she won it as Anne Quast Welts.

Said Philadelphia’s Mike Schmidt after hitting the home run that tied him with Mickey Mantle on the all-time homer list and Joe DiMaggio on the RBI list: “Babe Ruth is the biggest name in baseball history, but after Ruth, you’d be hard pressed not to think of Mantle as the second greatest baseball man of all time. Granted, Henry Aaron and DiMaggio are among the top four or five, but ‘The Mick’ is a big one.”

How about Ty Cobb? Or Willie Mays? Or Lou Gehrig? Or Rogers Hornsby? Or Ted Williams?

Mike might get some mail.

Trivia Answer: Both are the sons of Triple Crown winners--Secretariat in 1973 and Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.

Quotebook

Peter Jacobsen, after shooting a course-record 64 in the U.S. Open with a new putter: “‘I discovered that when you one-putt greens your score goes down.”