He Claims Foes Making Giants Say U.N.C.L.E.

With the New York Giants playing the Washington Redskins Sunday night, Giant Coach Ray Handley has spent some worrisome nights. But he doesn’t see Mark Rypien in his nightmares. He sees James Bond.

Handley has decided that the blame for the defending Super Bowl champions’ 4-3 record can’t be put on the offense or the defense. The problem, according to Handley, is spies in the Sheraton Meadowlands hotel who watch Giant practices and steal game plans.

Handley does not identify the spies, but has moved practices inside Giants Stadium this week.

NFL spokesman Reggie Roberts said the league was not aware of any allegations about teams spying on the Giants.

But Handley, who likes to read Robert Ludlum spy novels, said he has little doubt there has been some espionage.

The 21-story hotel is across the road from the Giants’ practice field and team officials suspect that opposing clubs have been renting rooms there that look down on the field.

“I don’t know on what floor in the Sheraton you have to get a room to see the practice field,” Handley said. “I don’t think it has to be very high.”

Trivia time: It’s not exactly in the same class as Mark Lemke’s two triples in Game 5 of the World Series, but in another World Series Game 5, a Dodger set a record that might never be equaled, hitting, on successive at-bats, into a triple play and then a double play. Can you name him?

Now it can be told: Although he never received credit for it, Leo Durocher, who died earlier this month, played a key role in Jackie Robinson’s historic breaking of the color line in baseball.

Phil Elderkin, in the Christian Science Monitor, writes about the weekend the Brooklyn Dodgers went to Panama in the spring of 1947 to play a few exhibitions.

Some of the players were angry about the impending debut of Robinson at the major league level, angry enough to propose drawing up a petition saying they would walk out if Robinson played.

Durocher got word of the threatened mutiny. He had his players awakened in the middle of the night, gathered them in the kitchen of their hotel and told them, in typical Durocher terminology, what he thought of their petition, how much he admired Robinson and how much better Robinson could make the team.

The petition died quietly.

Add Durocher: The Dodgers, with Robinson playing a key role, went on to win the 1947 National League pennant.

Ironically, Durocher didn’t reap any of the benefits. He was suspended by Commissioner Happy Chandler soon after his impassioned speech because of his alleged association with gamblers.

Trivia answer: Pitcher Clarence Mitchell of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1920.

There is life after football: Ron Meyer, fired several weeks ago by the winless Indianapolis Colts, has found a whole new world.

“I was ooohing and aaahing about the brilliant (fall) colors the other day,” Meyer told the Associated Press. “My wife said, ‘But, Ron, this happens every fall.’ ”

Quotebook: Golfer Larry Nelson, a fan of the Atlanta Braves, on playing in last week’s Walt Disney World Classic: “I want to win here, stand on the 18th green and say, ‘I’m going to the World Series.’ ”