Once 1 for 20, He’s Now One of a Select Few

His major league career consisted of one hit in 20 at-bats for the New York Highlanders in 1912. But Paul F. Otis Sr. of Duluth, Minn., has achieved baseball fame nonetheless.

Sunday, Otis will become only the third former ballplayer ever to reach the age of 100, according to Jim Ogle of the New York Yankees Alumni Assn. Ralph Darwin Miller, who played for Brooklyn in 1889 and Baltimore in 1900, died at 100 in 1973. John Francis Daley, a shortstop for the St. Louis Browns in 1912, was 101 when he died in 1988.

Otis was “discovered” six years ago when Ogle was lining up former players for a Yankee old-timers’ game.

“I don’t know how they found me, but they invited me to come to New York and I went,” Otis said recently.

The Highlanders, predecessors of the Yankees, sent Otis to the minors in 1912. He suffered a broken ankle, went to Duluth that fall and got into the insurance business.

Baseball record books indicate “Bill” Otis, 22, played for New York in 1912.

“I don’t know why they called me Bill,” Otis said. “I had a brother, Bill.”

And Otis’ only hit?

“It was off Walter Johnson, the great pitcher of the Washington Senators,” Otis said.

Add longevity: Copies of the Football Register and Ram media guides of 1966 and 1978 list new Cal State Long Beach Coach George Allen’s birth date as April 29, 1922.

That would make the former Ram coach 67, but now he is listed as being 71. Has Allen’s past caught up with him?

Trivia time: On Dec. 23, 1951, the Rams beat the Cleveland Browns for the NFL title, 24-17. Who scored the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter?

Bad example: Johnny Orr, Iowa State’s basketball coach, criticized Iowa counterpart Tom Davis for letting sophomore Ray Thompson play six nights after Thompson was arrested for public drunkenness and assaulting a police officer.

“If that happened to one of my players, when they were out until 2 in the morning and they were drunk, they’d never play for me again,” Orr told the Ames (Iowa) Tribune. “They’d be done.”

Thompson scored 32 points in Iowa’s 89-87 victory over Orr’s Cyclones.

Not a full Nelson: The Seattle Seahawks’ Steve Largent on his nice-guy reputation: “I think it places a lot of pressure on me. In some ways, I feel bad, because, as our coach says, you’re never as good or as bad as they say you are in the paper, and that’s certainly true with myself. I’m not the perfect parent. We don’t have the perfect family. I’m not Ozzie, and my wife’s not named Harriet.”

Trivia answer: Tom Fears, on a 73-yard pass play from Norm Van Brocklin.

Quotebook: Barry Tompkins, who will announce today’s Oklahoma-Loyola Marymount game for ESPN: “Instead of a tipoff, the referees will begin this one with a starter’s gun and the players will start from a crouch.”