Scorecard

Advice. Don't put marshmallows in your shoes. So says San Diegan Rick Altmark, who notes in a letter to the newspaper On The Run what happened when he did just that in an attempt to cushion his feet while running: "After a few miles the stuff started boiling out of my shoes. It was a mess."

Doomsaying. Dr. Christiaan Barnard, the heart-transplant pioneer, warns in a South African newspaper column that if you run along streets or highways, you may be inhaling "a sewer of noxious gases from car exhaust stirred up by your pounding feet and dragged into your straining lungs with every breath."

Rip-offs. Fred Lebow, president of the New York Road Runners Club, says that some podiatrists are "exploiting the running boom" by charging up to $400 for examination, treatment and prescription of custom-made arch supports that usually cost no more than $150.

Products. A Massachusetts jeweler has designed a silver-tipped "jogging stick" useful for warding off vicious dogs or getting through crowds, and a San Franciscan has come up with a "Jogger's ID card" with space for medical-history information. The latter idea was inspired by an article about two joggers who died—one from an aneurysm, the other when struck by a car.

Mishaps. Two joggers were stopped by a patrolman in Avon Lake, Ohio and charged with using roads "where walks and paths are available." They thought the officer was kidding, kept running and were also charged with resisting arrest. A woman was running along a road in Boulder, Colo. when she was arrested for running—literally—a red light. And in Maine one runner was accosted at knife point, another was hit by a car and hospitalized, and a third was arrested for littering after putting an empty can of Energade on a snowbank.

Glad tidings. The Boston Marathon is only two weeks off.

LIVE...FROM NEW YORK

Fans of the downtrodden, take heart. Chico Escuela is attempting a comeback, � la Jim Bouton, at age 41. The former All-Star second baseman who left the New York Mets in 1973 and has lately been employed as a sportscaster on NBC's Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" team, says his space in broadcasting is safe if his return to baseball ends up in the dirt. " NBC," says Escuela, "been bera, bera good to me."

Escuela is best remembered for his unique fielding tactic of sliding into second base along with the runner and for his personal motto: "Kip your eye on de bol."

The passage of time will ease Escuela's return in at least one respect: few of his old teammates who were featured in the more lurid chapters of his tell-all book, Bad Stuff About the Mets, which sold hundreds of copies in 1974, are still around to harass him.