He Hardly Rates as a Fountain of Baseball Information

Eleven months after picking up a baseball for the first time, former cricketer Julien Fountain of Bognor Regis, England, is heading for tryout camps in Florida armed with Britain’s best curve and a hunger to learn the American pastime.

Fountain, a right-hander whose fastball has been timed at 65 m.p.h. on a rusty radar gun, will pay his own way to tryouts with the Kansas City Royals, the Chicago White Sox, the Dodgers and possibly the Philadelphia Phillies.

The 5-foot-8, 154-pounder is confident about his athletic ability but a little concerned with his baseball knowledge.

“I took to it like a duck to water,” he said. “I had a strong arm, but obviously it was very erratic. The hardest thing was trying to keep it dead straight.”

The batters in America will no doubt keep that in mind.

“I’m chucking myself in at the really deep end with these tryouts,” he said. “I’m scared they are going to put me in a tactical situation. I can do the physical stuff, it’s the situations that are the problems.”

Chucking himself in at the really deep end?

Someone has to introduce this guy to Yogi Berra.

Add Fountain: At the same time he was learning how to slide and tag up, he injured his pitching arm and was unable to throw at full speed.

“My curveball suddenly came in June when I ripped all the ligaments in my shoulder,” Fountain said. “I was having physiotherapy and taking tons of painkillers. I must have been hallucinating, because the curveball was just moving like anything.”

When the New York Yankees pulled an about-face and signed Ron Guidry to a one-year contract after snubbing him all winter, the reason was clear. Perfectly clear.

“It was my decision,” owner George Steinbrenner said.

Was it hard to get new Manager Dallas Green to agree?

“Not at all,” Steinbrenner said. “I just told him.”

Scott Hastings of the Miami Heat was walking through the Milwaukee airport recently when a man stopped him.

“He saw me standing next to a few of my teammates and asked, ‘Who are you guys with?’ ” Hastings recalled.

“I told him, ‘We’re with the Miami Heat.’

“And he said, ‘Oh, you must be in town to play Marquette.’ ”

Quotebook

Former hockey star Bobby Hull on his divorce: “My wife made me a millionaire. I used to have three million.”