First Pro Was Also the First to Benefit From Double-Team

The man the National Football League considers to have been the first professional player, W. W. (Pudge) Heffelfinger, struck a pretty good deal for himself back in 1892. And he didn’t even need an agent.

Heffelfinger, a former All-American at Yale, was working on the railroad in Omaha when a scout for the Pittsburgh Athletic Club came to enlist Pudge for its big game against the Allegheny Athletic Assn. The scout offered $250.

Pudge showed up for the game all right, but he was wearing a different uniform.

Seems Allegheny offered him $500 to play. Pudge scored the only touchdown on a 25-yard run to lead Allegheny to a 4-0 victory, touchdowns counting for four points then.

Add Pudge: In recounting the legend of Heffelfinger for Pro Football Weekly, veteran columnist Jerry Magee calculated that Heffelfinger’s one-game contract would be comparable to what today’s average NFL player makes in week.

Last add Pudge: Nolan Ryan has nothing on this guy. At 65, Heffelfinger played an exhibition game at old Nicolette Park in Minneapolis. He died in 1957 at 90.

Trivia time: Where did Syracuse star Jim Brown figure in the 1956 Heisman Trophy balloting?

Drive time: In a story on Lloyd Daniels by Ivan Solotaroff in November’s Esquire, the author describes Coach Jerry Tarkanian of the San Antonio Spurs as looking like a cross between Mr. Magoo and Yertle the Turtle.

Actually, Magoo might be a better driver than Tarkanian.

“I really can’t focus on anything except for ball,” Tark says. “I can’t go to a movie because I can’t follow the plot and (wife) Lois gets mad at me. I haven’t finished a book in years because I can’t concentrate. That’s why I get lost on the highway, because I can’t follow directions and I’m always looking up and I missed my exit.”

What does he think about?

“I think about plays,” he said. “And I think about the players.”

Out of bounds: If Rocket Ismail of the Toronto Argonauts ever bolts the Canadian Football League for the Raiders, who retain his NFL rights, he might have to take a refresher course.

In the CFL, the field is about 12 yards wider than it is in the NFL.

“I worked out at home over the winter,” Ismail told Sport magazine. “I looked at the field. It was so small. I thought to myself, ‘Oh my, you could get killed on a little field like this.’ ”

Move in: Andy Van Slyke of the Pittsburgh Pirates had a feeling Atlanta’s Francisco Cabrera was going to single to left in Game 7 of the National League championship series in October.

Van Slyke said he tried to move left fielder Barry Bonds in a few steps.

“(Bonds) looked over at me as if to say he had it under control,” Van Slyke told Baseball Weekly. “It was almost like I had a premonition that the ball was going to go there. I don’t know if he remembers that. It sure makes you wonder what might have been if he had moved in.”

Cabrera’s ninth-inning hit scored two runs, including Sid Bream from second base, to win the pennant for the Braves.

Trivia answer: He finished fifth. The winner was Notre Dame’s Paul Hornung, followed by John Majors of Tennessee, Tom McDonald of Oklahoma and McDonald’s teammate, Gerry Tubbs.

Quotebook: New England nose tackle Fred Smerlas after Coach Dick MacPherson had become ill and President George Bush had lost the election: “I’ve just taken two blows in one day. We’ve just lost two of the best things that ever happened to this area--Coach Mac and the Republican Party.”