With This Team, a Manager Might Be Superfluous

Vin Scully, in his 47th year as the voice of the Dodgers, recently picked his all-time team--without a manager.

“I think most managers are alike, they’re only as good as their talent,” he said. “I’ve seen so many, it’s hard for me to really believe that one is that much better than the other.”

Scully’s team: 1b, Stan Musial; 2b, Joe Morgan; ss, Ozzie Smith; 3b, Mike Schmidt; lf, Willie Mays; cf, Mickey Mantle; rf, Hank Aaron; c, Johnny Bench; left-handed pitchers, Sandy Koufax and Whitey Ford; right-handed pitchers, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal and Don Drysdale.

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Trivia time: The Colorado Rockies’ Ellis Burks and Andres Galarraga are among the top candidates for the National League most valuable player award. How many times have teammates finished 1-2 in NL MVP balloting?

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Bakery goods: Bill Polian, general manager of the Carolina Panthers, talking about his team’s new offense before the opening game:

“What we’ve got is good ingredients, but the cake is still in the oven and the dough is just beginning to rise.”

The cake turned out fine and the frosting was a 29-6 win over the Atlanta Falcons.

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Wild-card thoughts: Not everyone likes major league baseball’s wild-card gimmick. Writes columnist Terence Moore in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“Among the scariest of the scary things ever brought to us by the lords of baseball is the wild-card monster. It’s easy to become one of these disgusting creatures. If you’re not good enough over 162 games to win your division, you can make the playoffs anyway by finishing the regular season less mediocre than everybody else.”

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Where are they now? Maury Wills, the Dodgers’ legendary base stealer, has joined the Boston Red Sox as a base-running instructor.

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How about Rancho? For the first time, a U.S. Open golf tournament will be played on a publicly owned course--Bethpage State Park in Farmingdale, N.Y. The U.S. Golf Assn. will pay about $2 million to bring the course up to country club standards.

Plenty of time to get tickets. It’s not until 2002.

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Trivia answer: Three--Cincinnati’s George Foster and Joe Morgan in 1977, San Francisco’s Kevin Mitchell and Will Clark in 1989, and Pittsburgh’s Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla in 1990.

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And finally: Olympic swimming bronze medalist Angel Martino lent her name to help promote a Swim Across America event to raise money for cancer research, but she drew the line at swimming across New York’s murky Hudson River.

“I’m chicken,” she said. “At least in a pool you can see the bottom.”