Scorecard

Air's Apparent

You wouldn't know Michael Jordan was back in the NBA by visiting Hoover Metropolitan Stadium, home of His Airness's last employer, the Birmingham Barons. Jordan's image adorns the cover of the Barons' game program, pocket schedule, media guide and merchandise brochures. Bobble-head Jordan dolls bob conspicuously in the Baron executive offices. The team will even hold a Michael Jordan Poster Day on May 7. Although Jordan no longer wears Baron black and white, there remains a definite Air about the Hoover Met. "We're saving his number 45 for when he decides to hang 'em up in basketball again," says Bill Hardekopf, the club's president.

Hardekopf has some very good reasons to miss Michael—like last season's club-record attendance of 467,867, the thousands of out-of-town requests for Baron caps and T-shirts, and a media feast that generated 130 press credentials for Jordan's debut compared with a dozen for last Friday's home opener. No wonder Hardekopf has turned the Met into a Baronial Graceland.

Around the clubhouse Jordan is missed more for his levity. Locker room hands recall a bantering, decidedly unbush bush leaguer who once broke up when pitcher Joey Vierra, a white cloth napkin draped over his forearm, served him coffee in the dugout. Jordan, who was nicknamed Kilroy, cultivated a reputation as a virtuoso clubhouse Ping-Pong and Yahtzee player. He even helped Dominican catcher Rogelio Nunez refine his English. "Michael would call out "double play' or 'Spalding,' " recalls clubhouse manager Cory Sifford. "If Noonie could spell it, Michael would give him $100."

Sifford, whose culinary budget is rather limited, had it easy last year. "A local barbecue place must have fed the guys for free 30 times," he says. "All it asked for was a couple of baseballs with Michael's autograph."

Jordan's stall is currently occupied by 24-year-old catcher Scott Vollmer. Sitting comfortably in Jordan's old metal chair in his Nike Air cleats, Vollmer serves as a reminder that although Elvis has left the building, Kilroy was definitely here.

Stale Air Down There
With fresh angles to the story of Michael Jordan's return to the NBA in short supply, the Chicago media have been hard-pressed to find new variations on old themes. A particularly desperate reporter asked Jordan last week, "Michael, a lot of people have said you don't have your height back. Is that true?" Replied Jordan, "No, I'm still 6'6"."

Bowl Games
It has been three months since we last reported on the far-flung exploits of the International Hurling Society (SCORECARD, Jan. 9), a Fort Worth-based organization dedicated to the art, science and sport of throwing things. The society is currently refining the world's largest hurling machine, a medieval trebuchet that insiders say will eventually be capable of slinging a Buick across two football fields. The results of the catapult's dry runs, as chronicled in the IHS journal Heave, have been positively potty: "We would like to thank Mr. Pearson of Weatherford, Texas, for the donation of five toilets for hurling, Mr. Armstrong of Tulsa, Okla., for his donation of a typewriter (hurled 89 yards), Brian Lewis for the cash register (awaiting hurling), and the Burgett family, who donated two toilets and currently hold the toilet hurling record of 123 yards."

Gooden Evil

Driving 117 mph at four o'clock on the morning of March 18 with beer on his breath and an open bottle of brew in his Mercedes, former New York Met pitcher Dwight Gooden set off more sirens in his troubled life. They sounded when Florida state troopers, as reported last week in the St. Petersburg Times, wrote him a $330 speeding ticket. After he passed a sobriety test, police decided not to cite Gooden for the open bottle.