Scorecard

SERENDIPITY

Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel got a four-year sentence last week following his conviction on charges of mail fraud and racketeering: for the latter, read playing legislative footsie with state racetrack interests. This was pretty much how it had gone four years ago for the late Otto Kerner, ex-Governor of Illinois, convicted in 1973 of mail fraud and corruption—corruption meaning that he had pushed legislation favoring racetrack interests. Kerner got three years. In both instances, the presiding judge was Robert L. Taylor, of Knoxville, Tenn.

Judge Taylor's name turned up again last week, this time in connection with a girls' basketball case. His ruling that Tennessee high school girls were to be permitted to play full-court ball was overturned on appeal, plunging the girls' game in that state back into the 19th Century.

Robert Love (Little Bob) Taylor, who is 77, would have preferred not to preside at the Mandel trial, but "Justice Burger called me up and talked to me in person. I asked if he could get another judge, by any reasonable efforts," he says, but apparently Burger would or could not.

Over the years Judge Taylor has been a jurist of flinty scrupulousness, particularly in his handling of early civil rights cases, and he has cast a clear eye on an astounding array of disputes. In 1966 he ruled that nudist camps be permitted in Tennessee—"Get Judge Darr's dissenting opinion," he advises, "and read his description of nudity. It is absolutely unique." Early this year he decided that the FDA had to return 6,700 cases of apricot pits to a man in east Tennessee (though he points out firmly, "This is not a Laetrile case"). The man was just entitled to his apricots. However, Judge Taylor was on the side of Tennessee's Tellico Dam vs. the snail darter, and still says, with evident pain, "the thing had cost $116 million!"

Taylor as a young man played basketball, football and, until a few years ago, tennis. But baseball was, and is, his favorite. He was shortstop and a second baseman in the Florida State League, and played semi-pro ball in the Appalachian League while at Vanderbilt, which in fact is how he put himself through college. (While in the Appalachian League he was making more money than his father was as Governor of Tennessee.) "I still think baseball takes more intelligence than any other sport," he says, adding much about the "hulks" who play football, though he supposes he should not be quoted.

As for girls' basketball, he huffs at the overturning of his decision. "It's prehistoric," he says. "The girls today, they're as strong as boys, they should be allowed to play anything."

GOOD INTENTIONS

With the Olympics still three years away, Congress is already sounding like a bunch of maiden aunts seeing a nephew off with the yearbook money. Admittedly, the Russians are lurking around the corner—NBC admits the Soviets have suggested that the network carry programs reflecting favorably on the U.S.S.R.—but this far in advance, it is difficult to see how NBC can give a meaningful ironclad guarantee to Rep. Lou Frey (R, Fla.) when he warns, "We don't want a lot of propaganda coming in...on how great the Soviet system is."

NBC, with $100 million on the line, can be expected to try to fend this off, and indeed it has signed contracts for decorous showings of the Bolshoi Nutcracker and Giselle ballets and the Moscow State Circus. Beyond that it would seem that the Superpowers—NBC and the Soviet Union—should just be expected to circle each other, the former with its control over all the cameras and the latter with its power to pull the plug. Anything else said this far in advance is like a promise to carry a clean handkerchief and not speak to strangers.