Scorecard

Many of the Debut Dinger Club's most notable members are still active, including the Texas Rangers' Will Clark and the Kansas City Royals' Gary Gaetti, but despite his boffo opening night, Ingram doesn't expect to help these guys improve the group's punchless reputation. "I can't believe I hit a home run," Ingram said after his first game. "That probably will be the last home run you see from me." Well, could be. Ingram, who had only 20 home runs in five years on the farm, is expected to return to the minors this week.

Close to Home

In the transient, ambition-and dollar-driven world of college coaching, where coaches routinely leave one program for the riches of another at a moment's notice, it's refreshing to note that some career decisions still come from the soul.

When Nell Fortner, the top assistant coach for Louisiana Tech's national runner-up women's basketball team, was offered the coveted Wisconsin job on May 13, she enthusiastically accepted. The offer included a four-year contract worth $75,000 a year, virtually unprecedented for a rookie women's coach. But soon she started to have second thoughts. After not sleeping or eating for several days, Fortner shocked the coaching community by resigning the Wisconsin post last Friday to return to her old position at Tech.

"I thought it was my time to go, but it wasn't," she says. "My instincts say I need to stay at Louisiana Tech, and my personal ambition just could not outweigh my heart."

By listening to something other than the roar of the crowd and the ring of the cash register, Fortner may have saved herself—and two programs—a lot of grief.

Cutting Strokes

The following appeared under the heading "The Rules of Golf" on a local computer bulletin board in Elkton, Md. An author was not credited, though we know of any number of golfers who could have written it.

1. "A ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled in the rough. Such veering right or left frequently results from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball, and the player should not be penalized for erratic behavior of the ball resulting from such uncontrollable mechanical phenomena."

2. "A ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree. Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in the scientific game. The player should estimate the distance the ball would have traveled if it had not hit the tree and play the ball from there, preferably from a nice tuft of grass."