Harmon Answered the Call While Working After School

In an age of high-powered recruiting, it is interesting to read the words of the late Tom Harmon.

“People are surprised to hear I didn’t have a scholarship at Michigan,” he once told Times staff writer Earl Gustkey. “They weren’t allowed in the Big Ten. But I had good jobs. In fact, in my senior year I had the class job on campus. I was the Philip Morris representative.

“Every evening at dinner time, I went to three fraternities and three sororities and put three Philip Morris cigarettes next to each plate. For that I got 10 bucks a week and lived like a king.”

Add Harmon: He recalled being summoned to Detroit, for lunch with Henry Ford.

“He asked me what kind of car I wanted,” said Harmon. “I told him I wanted a red Mercury convertible. He worked it out where I paid $1,300 for it, which I’m sure was the best deal anyone ever got for that car.

“Then he took me to the assembly plant and I got to watch the car being put together piece by piece.”

Trivia time: What do Lou Holtz, Jack Lambert and the late Thurman Munson have in common?

Total recall: Bob Hertzel of the Sporting News said he was having lunch with Pete Rose in a Florida country club when a man came up and asked for an autograph.

“You know,” said the man, “my niece is married to a ballplayer, Juan Berenguer.”

“Throws hard,” said Rose, who then turned to a companion and said. “I got two knocks off him. Know how I know? It came the day I got served with my divorce papers. That week I went 17 for 25.”

Add Rose: He shoots golf in the high 80s but says, “If I’d started this game back when I was young, I’d be on the senior tour right now. I’ll tell you this, there’s no one who took up the game just last September who plays any better than me.” Problem is, Rose turns 49 in April. You have to be 50 to play on the senior tour.

The jinx lives: After Gary Payton made the cover of Sports Illustrated, Oregon State lost the rest of its games. It lost to Arizona in the regular season and was upset by Arizona State in the Pac-10 tournament and Ball State in the NCAA tournament.

Payton scored five points against Arizona, 11 against Ball State.

For the record: From Pete Incaviglia of the Texas Rangers: “People think we make $3 million and $4 million a year. They don’t realize that most of us make $500,000.”

Body language: When Philadelphia’s Charles Barkley proclaimed himself the best forward in the NBA, somebody asked about Utah’s Karl Malone.

“Well, he’s the only one comparable,” said Barkley, “but his body is so different from mine. Even my wife loves his body, and that’s the main reason I say I’m the best. With a body like that, he’s supposed to be awesome. With a body like mine, I’m supposed to be a couch potato.”

Trivia answer: All three went to Kent State.

Quotebook: Vin Scully, recalling when Red Barber hired him as a Dodger broadcaster in Brooklyn: “My mother was impressed. She thought I had been hired by Red Skelton.”