Scorecard

MY OLD KENTUCKY SCORNED

Calumet Farm's Sunny Tim established himself as one of the best 3-year-old colts in the country when he won the Bay Shore Stakes in New York last Saturday, but don't start thinking of him as a likely choice to win the Kentucky Derby. He won't be there. Calumet's owner, Mrs. Gene Markey, refused to nominate Sunny Tim to the Derby after stating in 1968 that she would never again run a horse in Kentucky until the Forward Pass-Dancer's Image mess was cleared up (the winner's share of the 1968 Derby is still in escrow, though it is two years since Calumet's Forward Pass was awarded the purse three days after Dancer's Image, supposedly dosed with Butazolidin, beat him). Mrs. Markey not only won't race in Kentucky, she will not even visit her house in Lexington during the spring meeting at Keeneland. "I shall miss the dogwood," she said the other day, "but not the racing."

The Calumet boycott is significant. The stable has won the Derby seven undisputed times—Sunny Tim's sire is Tim Tarn, Calumet's 1958 Derby winner—and its deliberate absence from Louisville this Derby Day will be a telling blow to the race's prestige.

IN LIVING BLACK AND WHITE

Louisiana Tech, home school of Terry Bradshaw, No. 1 pick in the pro football draft, is virtually all white, while Grambling College, home school of a host of pro football stars (nine were drafted this time), is just about all black. Yet the two institutions, located five miles apart in the rolling hills of northern Louisiana, appear to be a stimulating example of interracial harmony. The schools cooperate academically and athletically. They exchange classes and professors, and a student of one can enroll in a course at the other for no additional fee. The baseball and basketball teams practice against one another, and Louisiana Tech's president, F. Jay Taylor, says, "We're going to play each other formally soon, though right now they'd be pretty strong for us in football."

Grambling's president, who has held the post for the past 34 years, is Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones, known as Prez to students and teachers on both campuses. Prez was Grambling's first football coach and remains its first and only baseball coach. He initiated Grambling's now impressive athletic program, started its nationally known marching band, taught math, physics and chemistry, served as registrar and dean of men and even wrote the Grambling school song. The other day Louisiana Tech honored President Jones by awarding him the fourth honorary degree the school has conferred in its 75-year-old history. As the ceremony was ending the Grambling president could be faintly heard singing Louisiana Tech's school song. His counterpart, President Taylor, said, "Sing out, Prez. This is your alma mater, too, now."

LEGAL NOTE
Before his case gets into court, Curt Flood might check into the revised labor laws in Mexico, which become effective on May 1. Under them, a baseball player cannot be forced to switch clubs without his permission. And, if he wants to, a player can take one day off a week.

READ ALL ABOUT IT
A new publication called Earth Times, militantly outspoken on ecology and conservation, is upon us. It is fairly ugly in itself (cheaply printed, it favors jammed-up layouts and a sickly green ink on its cover page), but in its defense of the environment it is beautifully blunt and tough. If there is a lingering stereotype of the conservationist as a falsetto-voiced birdwatcher, Earth Times dispels it with headlines like IF THEY TRY TO SPRAY, WE'LL SHOOT THEM DOWN and SEWAGE IN THE SURF AT WAIKIKI and GEORGIA UNDERGROUND RAISES STINK. A few of the items mistake bombast for fact, and the prose gets a little confused at times—"It's becoming more clear (it always has been)...," says an editorial—but most of the material is briskly written and impressively documented, particularly a report on the effect of helicopter-borne defoliant sprays in Arizona. You might take a look at Earth Times. It is published in San Francisco, but in a very real way it's your local paper.

VICE DEAN
Now don't take this one too seriously, but we are told that at the University of Chicago recently a group of 147 men and women calling themselves the Students for Violent Non-Action took over the university pool for a nude swim-in. James W. Vice (interesting name, that), assistant dean of students, came by to observe. "I just walked over to see what was coming off," he is reported to have said. "It was all very good-natured." Asked if any school regulations had been broken, the assistant dean replied, "We never thought of making a rule against anything like this."

IN PLAIN SIGHT