Scorecard

Ted's Tunnel of Love

Ted Williams, aging more crustily than gracefully—which is exactly how you would want him to age—returned to the town he loved and loathed last Friday. "Everyplace I go, they're waving at me, sending out a cheer," Williams, 77, told a crowd of 3,000 Bostonians who came to watch the dedication of the Ted Williams Tunnel, the third tunnel under Boston Harbor. And I can't help but be thinking, Jeez, for people to be so nice and respectful and enthused...I've only seen that when somebody looks like they're gonna die. Or they are gonna die. And I'd just like to way this one thing today: I'm a long way from that."

Williams's words had added resonance because of his declining health, the result of two strokes. His motor skills have weakened, and this most boyish of immortals at last looks his age. But Teddy Ballgame's hold over Beantown, where he played for every one of his 19 Hall of Fame years, remains absolute. Of the many and varied tributes Williams received on Saturday, none was more powerful than the one delivered just before midnight by 10-year-old Kate Shaughnessy at the end of the Jimmy Fund Show at the Park Plaza Hotel, the last stop in Williams's fete-filled day. Two years ago Kate, the daughter of Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, learned she had leukemia. The Jimmy Fund, with which Williams has been associated for many years, has helped her and her family fight the disease. Here is the poem that Kate wrote for Williams and read at the end of the show on Friday.

Ted Williams is a really, really great guy
He really likes kids, but he hates wearing ties;
He won two Triple Crowns and was the MVP twice,
He feuded with sportswriters, but to kids he was nice.
521 homers, he's in the Hall of Fame,
He's The Kid, The Thumper, and Teddy Ballgame.
He would do anything for the Jimmy Fund,
And I'd like to say thank you for all that he's done.

Off-line Heisman

Though Ohio State running back Eddie George's margin of victory in the Heisman Trophy race was convincing, it paled next to a historic performance by Alan Cannon, the sports information director at Texas A&M, in the Hypesman Award balloting. Cannon was the first unanimous winner of the Hypesman, a tongue-in-cheek honor given annually by the Dead Sports Information Directors Society, a group founded in 1990 by former S.I.D.'s wanting to promote information directing. The award goes to the college or university publicist "who personifies the hyperbolic nature of the Heisman."

To boost Heisman interest in Aggie junior running back Leeland McElroy, Cannon used not only conventional methods of hype (he sent out 20,000 'Lectric Leeland postcards and distributed 250 videotapes of McElroy highlights) but also broke ground when he helped set up a McElroy page on the World Wide Web. Alas, the site was not updated after Oct. 30, by which time he was out of the Heisman race. Said one Hypesman voter, "Cannon made a wrong turn on the Information Super Highway and ended up in a cul-de-sac."

A Supreme Test

On Dec. 8 the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case, Brown v. Pro Football, Inc., et al., that could change the labor landscape in pro football, basketball and hockey. Brown is a class action suit filed on behalf of development squad players whose earnings were unilaterally capped by the NFL at $1,000 a week in 1989. The league was then involved in a prolonged battle over a new contract with its players' union; technically no contractual relationship existed between the NFL and the NFL Players Association at that time.

The central issue is this: At what point in the collective bargaining process can players begin an antitrust suit against a league? Currently, franchise owners in football, basketball and hockey are exempt from some provisions of antitrust law—thus under certain circumstances they are allowed to act in concert with one another, even after a contract with a players' union expires. This waiver is derived from the courts' longtime reluctance to intrude in the collective bargaining process. (Baseball is also exempt from antitrust law but falls under a separate exemption, which cannot be affected by this case.)