Spirit of Games May Have Been Left on Plane

At least one American athlete at the Pan American Games was still steaming during the weekend because of the flap over the travels of the U.S. men’s basketball team.

The team spent three days at a posh Miami hotel last week instead of staying in the athletes’ village in Havana.

In Miami, the U.S. players soaked their aching bodies in Jacuzzis and watched videos in their rooms. They ate chicken wings at Hooters and filled their gym bags with chips, crackers and jars of peanut butter.

“You should rip these guys,” U.S. wrestler Bruce Baumgartner told a reporter in Havana. “These games aren’t just about winning a gold medal, they’re about making friends and having camaraderie among the athletes.”

Get serious, said Bill Wall, executive director of USA Basketball.

Wall had pulled his team out of the athletes’ village, booked a $10,000 (one-way) charter flight for Miami and the ritzy Mayfair House, where rooms start at $175 per night. Each room is a suite with its own terrace Jacuzzi and VCR.

“If we’re spoiled and arrogant, so be it,” Wall said. “The days of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts in the village are over. We’re going to stay in the best properties.”

Trivia time: In 1920, where was Babe Ruth when he was told that the Boston Red Sox had sold him to the New York Yankees?

Add Ruth: When filming began in 1947 for “The Babe Ruth Story,” former Chicago Cub pitcher Charley Root was invited to appear in the film. Root was the 1932 World Series pitcher against whom Ruth allegedly “called his shot” with a Series home run at Wrigley Field.

Root maintained for the rest of his life (he died in 1970) that Ruth did not signal a home run by pointing to the center-field seats, that he had merely made an umpire’s strike-call gesture.

According to Ruth biographer Robert Creamer, Root turned down the invitation to appear in the movie when he learned the film would show Ruth (played by William Bendix) predicting a home run.

“Not if you’re going to have him pointing,” Root said, according to Creamer. “He didn’t point. If he had, I’d have knocked him on his (rear) with the next pitch.”

Missing Cuban: Cuban baseball player Victor Mesa, on the recent defection in the United States of his teammate, pitcher Rene Arocha:

“That was his decision. We go to the United States all the time. If we want to stay, we can stay. But no one stays. Everyone knows we could make money. Our conscience won’t let us. We always come back. We have complete liberty. They used to hold us back. Not now, though.”

Trivia answer: On the 18th hole of Los Angeles’ Griffith Park Golf Course.

Quotebook: U.S. high jumper Hollis Conway, after finishing third at the Pan Am Games, on being bothered by spectators whistling at him: “No one has whistled at me before, other than women.”