Namesake Had to Ask for Tickets

Six years ago, a man named Elvin Drake called the office of the UCLA/Pepsi Invitational track and field meet and asked if he could arrange for a pair of credentials to the meet.

What was so unusual about that? Only that Elvin Drake, better known as Ducky Drake, was the longtime trainer and former track coach at UCLA, for whom Drake Stadium was named. That’s where the meet was held.

Drake died late Friday night after suffering a heart attack. He was 85.

Add Drake: He knew just about every athlete who passed through Westwood the past 60 years. He was both a confidant and a friend to anyone who needed one.

Gary Beban, the 1967 Heisman Trophy winner, remembers his first meeting with Drake.

“It was my first day there as a freshman and I was sitting on the training table,” Beban said. “He looks at me and says, ‘You’re so skinny, you sure won’t use up much tape.’

“It really was a confidence builder.”

From Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post: Notre Dame’s claim to No. 1 began as a forbidden whisper among players during last summer’s sweltering workouts, made all the more miserable by the hectoring voice of Coach Lou Holtz telling them to forget it. It was too remote a chance, not just a matter of long hard labor, but also of caprice. “You don’t win the national championship,” Holtz says. “You just wake up one morning and you’re there.”

And from Coach Don Nehlen of third-ranked West Virginia, Notre Dame’s opponent in next Monday’s Fiesta Bowl: “Sooner or later all of this, the bid and the undefeated season will sink in. I haven’t had time to enjoy it yet. I haven’t had time to sleep. And when I do, it’s time to get up. I feel like a shoplifter in a mall and all the merchants know I’m here.”

Happy Holiday, world champions: Sunday, the Lakers woke up to Christmas in a hotel at Salt Lake City.

Great, huh?

“You would think that someone would show some compassion when the schedule is made up and give people Christmas Day off,” Pat Riley told Peter May of the Hartford Courant. “Why don’t they just take 2 days off the schedule for everyone?”

The answer, of course, is television. The Christmas game generally unites sports-starved couch potatoes all over the country and thus draws pretty good ratings.

Wrote Richard Justice of the Washington Post after the Houston Astros had acquired Jim Clancy: “He’s a 200-inning workhorse and has a strong, durable arm. He’s not unlike Mike Scott, who developed a scuffball--or the greatest forkball in history--and has averaged 17 victories the last 4 seasons.

“A lot of teams fool around with illegal pitches, but it appears no one teaches it better than the Astros. When American Leaguers start flailing at (Nolan) Ryan’s 95-m.p.h. whiffleball next summer, they’ll understand.”

Thirty-four years ago today: Otto Graham scored 3 touchdowns and passed for 3 to lead the Cleveland Browns to a 56-10 rout of the Detroit Lions for the National Football League title.

Thirty three years ago, the Browns intercepted 6 passes, 1 of which was returned 65 yards for a touchdown by Don Paul, to post a 38-14 victory over the Rams for the NFL championship.

Saturday, the Browns were eliminated in a wild-card game by the Houston Oilers, 24-23.

In Saturday’s edition of the Arizona Republic sports section appeared this advertisement: “OK Phoenicians, now you know why we were glad to see them go. Ho ho ho.” Former St. Louis Cardinals fans.

Quotebook

Bart Giamatti, the former president of Yale who will become the commissioner of baseball in April, pontificating on sport in society: “How we choose to use our leisure time as opposed to how we choose to trudge to work tells us an enormous amount about a culture or an individual. That’s very valuable in a human life. So the people who say, ‘Oh, my God, it’s a game!’ and giggle nervously haven’t thought very long about the role these activities play in an individual’s or a society’s life.”