Scorecard

OUT OF THE MOUTHS
Near Chicago a grandmother took her 4-year-old grandson and 7-year-old granddaughter for a ride in her small car. The youngsters began squabbling over which would get to sit in the front seat. "If you don't let me sit there," the 4-year-old said to his sister, "I'll chop your head off." The 7-year-old shrugged. "Who cares?" she said. "With all this pollution we'll be dead soon anyway."

ON THE BEACH

When word got around last week that NFL clubs were being subpoenaed by a federal grand jury rumors spread that it all had something to do with Walter Beach, a cornerback with the Cleveland Browns from 1963 to 1967. Beach, now a second-year law student at Yale, at first refused to comment, but in a little-noticed interview over New Haven radio station WELI he admitted, "I might have a lawsuit pending against the National Football League and the Cleveland Browns because they prevented me from playing football. I played in the NFL and started for four years. The fifth year I was reading Message to the Black Man by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The Browns said I should not read this type of material. I'm not a Muslim, and I'm not going to be a Muslim, but from that time on I had trouble. This was during the Black Power rise, when they first started to wear Afros. I was exerting my rights in terms of conversation."

The Browns say Beach was injured in his last season with them and lost his starting position. The following summer, they say, he did not want to accept a backup job and Owner Art Modell let him go. Last week, Beach told SPORTS ILLUSTRATED Correspondent Bill Guthrie, "Two days before camp opened in 1967 I went in to see Modell. He told me, 'We've decided to put you on waivers. You can't make our team.' " Beach said he then found himself unwanted by any club, including the brand-new New Orleans Saints, who had yet to put a squad on the field. "The Saints had such outstanding cornerbacks," he said, "that they didn't need my skills. All of a sudden, I was mediocre."

The point at issue in Beach's argument—legally, at any rate—is not racism but monopoly. He claims that he was blackballed for his off-field activities, that his opportunity to earn a living at his trade was denied him by an illegal agreement among NFL clubs. The ramifications of his suit—the grand jury hearing was to get under way this week—could open a very big can of worms.

BID AND ASKED
It's probably too late now, but a couple of weeks ago want-ad columns in the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch were doing a land-office business in tickets for the Ohio State-Michigan game this Saturday. One ad one day said: "Four OSU-Mich. box seats, $400 today and I'll give one pr. $30 binoculars as bonus. Also will lend a stadium parking permit. Pressing bills only reason for selling." An inch or so farther down in the column there was an ad from the other side of the fence, a no-nonsense request that said: "Wanted, 12 tickets to Mich. game Nov. 21. No singles. $10 seat." Bid and asked prices seemed far apart, but we hope that somehow a compromise was reached, that the 12-ticket seeker will be ensconced in Ohio Stadium Saturday and that the $400 man is happily paying off his grocer, or bookmaker.

SOME BAY AREA

Talk about regional basketball teams with multiple home courts, like the Floridians and the Carolina Cougars, how does the San Francisco- Oakland- St. Louis Warriors sound to you? Franklin Mieuli, owner of the Warriors, has been listening to Ben Kerner, who sold his St. Louis Hawks to Atlanta two years ago. Kerner wants to buy 30% of the Warriors and put on half the club's home schedule in the new St. Louis auditorium. Mieuli has had only one profitable season in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1961, and last year the club is said to have lost $900,000.

If the deal goes through, maybe the team's name should be changed to the Bay Area Mississippi Mudcats.

THE COSMETIC OLYMPICS