In the Old Days, He Wouldn’t Have Had a Prayer of Going

A couple of years a ago, Kay Yow, who was the U.S. women’s basketball coach in the Goodwill Games, was detained at the airport in Moscow when Soviet authorities discovered Yow carrying Bibles into the country.

After much arm-waving by U.S. and Soviet officials, the incident was smoothed over and Yow’s team went on to win the gold medal.

Now, another American athletic team is jumping into the fray.

Gonzaga University’s baseball team is currently on a tour of the Soviet Union. In an undertaking fraught with logistical headaches, the Roman Catholic school in Spokane, Wash.--it’s a Jesuit institution--is bringing along a priest.

His motto: “Have chalice, will travel.”

The trip, though, will be nothing novel for Father Tony Lehman, who has traveled extensively throughout the Soviet Union and said he does not anticipate any difficulties in the officially atheistic country.

“I’ve said Mass in American and French embassies and I’ve said it in hotel rooms without any fuss,” Lehman said. “There was a time 30 years ago, it would have been much more difficult.”

Note to Lehman: Two years ago it was pretty scary for Yow. Say your prayers.

Trivia time: During the tenure of Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, what increased steadily every year in baseball, including by 30% last year?

Speak up, Marvin: Marvin Miller, former head of the baseball players’ union, on Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti:

“Giamatti, I don’t have to tell you, he comes from about the only institution in the country as right wing and arrogant as the baseball owners--namely academia, where notions of due process or just cause are completely foreign. They know about as much about due process as the Hottentots.”

Touche: Giamatti, asked to comment on Miller’s quote:

“With consummate deftness, Mr. Miller manages to insult or defame people of color, working women, teachers and intellectuals--that is, core constituencies of today’s labor movement. He has not lost his sensitive, light touch.”

Long bomb: Bo Jackson’s 461-foot homer for the Kansas City Royals off Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers earlier this week was the longest in Arlington Stadium since they began measuring home runs there three years ago.

Cut out for the game: The 10 teams competing in the 1989 National Junior College World Series took different routes to Grand Junction, Colo., but a player from Brookdale, N.J., took the strangest.

Carl Koltz, 19, a first baseman and relief pitcher for Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, N.J., spent 90 minutes being cut out of his car after it collided with a garbage truck in Lincroft a week before the tournament.

“They had to cut my door off and cut out my clutch,” Koltz said. “I couldn’t feel the left side of my body. I was scared and it was pretty bad.”

The accident happened, but Koltz showed up with his team, anyway. “I’ve had some headaches but I want to get in,” he said.

Once he was out, that is.

Trivia answer: The number of companies licensed to sell official professional baseball merchandise. There are currently 325 licensees.

Quotebook: Baltimore Manager Frank Robinson, on the Orioles’ fast start: “This will only continue if the other clubs cooperate.”