It Was Risky, but He Didn’t Take a Spill

Curtis Turner was a dirt-tracking Southern race driver who never let a race on Sunday interfere with a party on Saturday night. Turner, who will be inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame next Wednesday night in Birmingham, Ala., is remembered as much for his off-track exploits as for his winning races.

One day he lined up eight bottles of whiskey on a road, leaving a space between them that was barely wider than the Cadillac he was driving. Turner then executed a 180-degree turn at speed, and the Cadillac rolled backward, perfectly, between the double rows of bottles, never touching a one.

Turner climbed from the car and drawled: “It was easy. I couldn’t waste all that good liquor.”

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Upstaged: If you attended Billerica High in rural Massachusetts and made it to the major leagues, you would expect to be the town sports hero, wouldn’t you? It didn’t happen to shortstop Gary DiSarcina even after he became a starter with the Angels.

DiSarcina, you see, played one year behind Tom Glavine, the Atlanta Braves’ Cy Young Award winner, at Billerica.

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Trivia time: Bobby Jones played in the 1929 U.S. Amateur tournament at Pebble Beach, the year before he won golf’s Grand Slam. How did he fare?

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Bet a bob or two: British bookie William Hill has offered 1,000-1 against a British player winning a singles title at Wimbledon. That is four times the odds against a UFO turning up, or the Loch Ness Monster being discovered.

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Easy task: When Betsy King shot 17 under par and won the LPGA championship at Bethesda, Md., by a record 11 strokes in one of the greatest performances in women’s golf history, her caddie, Gary Harrison, was carrying bags in only his fourth tournament.

“The way Betsy was playing, Rin Tin Tin could carry her clubs and it wouldn’t make any difference,” Harrison said when asked how he held up under major tournament pressure.

Harrison is the husband of a woman King recently hired to manage her beauty parlor.

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Peaceful existence: Homer Rice, Georgia Tech’s athletic director, says one of his first football coaching jobs--in a prison--was the best of his career.

“They were all home games, and I never had to worry about the alumni,” Rice explained.

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Some shot: Birdies and eagles have long been associated with the game of golf, but geese?

A spectator at a Winnipeg, Canada, golf course wound up with a Canada goose, thanks to a boy whose 110-yard drive on the ninth hole hit and killed the bird.

Wade Chaikowsky saw the bird fall, offered it to everyone on the scene and then put it on his family’s table when there were no takers.

“It was a killer drive,” Chaikowsky said.

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Overkill: The pitch on television to buy the $125 triplecast package that will enable viewers to get the Barcelona Olympics on three cable channels--including every minute of the U S. basketball squad--puzzles Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post.

“Who signs up to see every last second of the dream team pounding the bejesus out of the Third World, the same people who root for Bambi to get shot?”

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Trivia answer: Jones lost to little known Johnny Goodman of Omaha in the first round. Harrison Johnston won the tournament.

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Fast pushers: The U.S. bobsled federation is sending representatives to the U.S. Olympic track and field trials this weekend in New Orleans. The federation figures if someone can’t run sprints fast enough for Barcelona, maybe he can push sleds fast enough for Lillehammer in ’94.

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Quotebook: Gary Player, on the game he plays: “Golf is a puzzle without an answer. There is no way to figure it out.”