In Jerome’s World, Teachers Just Don’t Make the Grade

Jerome Walton of the Chicago Cubs probably never took an apple to school for his teacher.

At least, not one that wasn’t rotten.

Participating in a survey, Walton and other major leaguers were asked by Sport magazine: “How do you feel about baseball players making so much more money than schoolteachers?”

Said Walton: “Athletes have been working hard to get to the major league level since they were little kids. For that, they deserve the big money. . . . Teachers just wake up every morning and . . . sit in the classroom.”

Trivia Time: Who was the eighth-round pick of the Philadelphia Warriors in the 1960 NBA draft?

Big bucks: According to Sport magazine, Don James of Washington is the highest-paid coach in college football with an annual salary of $750,000.

Washington hasn’t been to the Rose Bowl since 1982.

Winnin’ time: Rick Mahorn of the Philadelphia 76ers, on the NBA playoffs: “You have to be dedicated. You have to be selfish. You’ve got to let your family sit back and let you do what you enjoy--play basketball. There is no time for the little nit-picking things. This is not the time for, ‘Oh, honey, you’ve got to cut the grass.’ It is not time for you to go pick up so and so.

“The whole persona is, you have to be selfish. It is nothing against your family, your loved ones. This is the sacrifice you’ve got to have. I’m just trying to instill what I’ve learned from those three years (with the Detroit Pistons), what I’ve learned about what you have to do to be a champion.”

All clear now: Said Mike Tyson, who is from the same neighborhood in Brooklyn that produced Lyle Alzado: “I couldn’t understand how a white guy could be from my neighborhood, but then I met him and (now) I can see why.”

Celebrity chat: Patrick Ewing of the New York Knicks, who didn’t play basketball until he was 13, told film maker Spike Lee in Interview magazine: “I played soccer and cricket when I lived in Jamaica. I wanted to be the next Pele.”

Asked if he had been a goalie, Ewing said: “No. That’s Akeem. I was a forward.”

Akeem Olajuwon was a soccer goalie in his native Nigeria.

A little dab’ll do ya: In an article he wrote for a French newspaper in Montreal, Manager Buck Rodgers of the Expos made a passing reference to the hair gel used by pitcher Pascual Perez of the New York Yankees, a former Expo.

Later in the article, Rodgers wrote: “To come back to my friend Pascual, who so many managers suspected (of doctoring the baseball), let’s say I never directly asked him the question. If I don’t know something, I don’t have to lie when I talk about it. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

“But according to my observations, if he came back into the National League, I would be the first guy to have him checked.”

Cheap seats: The Montreal Expos sell 4,366 bleacher seats to each game for $1 in Canadian currency, about 85 cents in U.S. funds, the lowest-priced tickets in the major leagues.

Trivia Answer: George Raveling of Villanova.

Quotebook: Reggie Jackson, who says that Jose Canseco could be baseball’s first $5-million man, told the New York Times: “He should be thinking of himself on a level with Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays . . . and Reggie Jackson.”