Scorecard

ON TOP

With the Dodgers' World Series victory (page 32), the city of Los Angeles has reached a sports pinnacle. L.A. can now claim to be home to the world champions of both baseball and basketball (the Lakers), the nation's No. 1-ranked college football team ( UCLA, according to most polls), the greatest player in hockey ( Wayne Gretzky) and, if you include nearby cities such as Newport Beach and Placentia, some of the top stars of this year's Seoul Olympic Games (including Florence Griffith Joyner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Janet Evans).

Enjoy it while it lasts, L.A.

OH,BROTHER
During the World Series, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen discovered a real pair of Bash brothers. Richard and Daniel, living in Castro Valley, Calif. Despite their seeming natural affinity to the so-called Bash Brothers of the Athletics, Richard and Daniel Bash are Dodger fans.

THE TOO-LATE SHOW

There's a conclusion to be drawn from the familiar scenes of drunken brawling in the stands at Giants Stadium during the Buffalo Bills' 37-14 victory over the New York Jets on Oct. 17: Either the NFL needs to stop playing Monday night games in the East or ABC-TV should move up the 9 p.m. starting time of such games by at least an hour.

The problem is pregame drinking. By the time the Jets-Bills game got under way, a significant minority of fans had been sitting around at bars or in the parking lot for a couple of hours getting soused. When Buffalo jumped to a 31-7 halftime lead, many unhappy fans took off the paper Jets caps they had been given as they entered the stadium and started throwing them. Some of the caps were piled up and set on fire. At least 30 fights broke out, 11 other "incidents"—including beer-throwing—were reported by stadium security guards, and 56 fans were ejected for unruly behavior. Fifteen other spectators were arrested.

This was hardly the first time such ills had beset a Monday night game in the East. The New England Patriots have had particular trouble over the years (SCORECARD, Oct. 13, 1980 et seq.). Teams have tried increasing security and limiting beer sales inside their stadiums, but those remedies haven't done the trick. The Jets-Bills game was staffed by a slightly larger security force than usually works daytime games at Giants Stadium. Beer sales were cut off eight minutes into the third quarter rather than at the end of that period, as is the custom at day games.

Short of such drastic measures as banning beer completely inside and outside stadiums and perhaps putting fans through sobriety tests at the gate, one logical answer seems to be to do something about late starting times. ABC Sports president Dennis Swan-son, whose network pays the NFL a reported $7.2 million a game for rights to the Monday telecasts, has said in the past that affiliates in the eastern and central time zones prefer that all Monday night games start an hour earlier, no matter where they're played. That's because the games as now scheduled end so late—often after midnight in the East.

The first four Monday night games this season were played an hour earlier than usual, largely to help ABC compete with rival NBC's Olympic coverage. The experiment worked well: There were no significant spectator problems, and ratings did not suffer even though the telecasts began at 5 p.m. (Pacific time) on the West Coast. It would be wise to make the change permanent.