Scorecard

As everyone knows, professional football is the vocation of some rather large people. Just how large has now been pointed out, with the fingers no less, of the Oakland Raiders.

Last week the Raiders received their championship rings, emblematic of victory in Super Bowl XI. While the average man has a ring size of 10�, the Raider average is 12?, with some 14s among their number. The biggest went to Otis Sistrunk, the 6'4", 273-pound defensive lineman, who wears a size 17. That ring is almost 3? inches in circumference and 1[5/32] inches in diameter.

The club record, however, is still held by Dan Birdwell, a defensive tackle who retired in 1970. Birdwell's ring, a size 19, was so large that the knot of a necktie could pass through it.

The alltime record probably belongs to Bronko Nagurski, whose ring is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Nagurski's size-23 ring measures approximately 4? inches in circumference and 1? inches in diameter.

HURRY ON DOWN TO BELMONT

The 70,000 people who showed up at Belmont Park Saturday did so despite the best efforts of the New York Racing Association to keep the race a secret. No wonder the NYRA is in trouble. It has lost thousands of customers to the OTB parlors strewn throughout the city, a few more because of labor difficulties, and stands to lose who knows how many when the Meadowlands in New Jersey opens its first thoroughbred meeting in September. NYRA Chairman Dinny Phipps needed a bang-up selling job. So, the week of the Kentucky Derby, just one month before the Belmont, Phipps hired a marketing expert and gave him the title vice-president in charge of marketing. It seemed like a smart move.

But new VP Ted Demmon admits that the only thing he knew about horses is which end the tail is on. His previous job was marketing vice-president for Hardee's, the "hurry on down to" hamburger joints, where he was also in charge of product development. While Phipps hasn't yet assigned him that job, someone at the NYRA should have told Demmon that a man named Billy Turner has just spent a year developing the hottest product the NYRA could have hoped for. Yet just three days before Seattle Slew was to become the first undefeated Triple Crown winner in the history of racing, the television ads in New York were still inviting people to come on out to beautiful Belmont Park, where, just maybe, some afternoon they might see another Secretariat.

FIGURE THIS ONE

Another facet of the lively ball controversy has been revealed by William Weiss, historian for the Class A California League who notes the phenomenon is not limited to the majors. Hitters have been on a tear in Weiss' six-team league, with homers up 98%, triples 34%, doubles 24% and runs scored 19%. Batting averages also are higher with 24 regulars above .300 compared to 14 in 1976.

But ponder this: the California League has not changed baseballs. A Wilson ball is still being used and the first month many were leftovers from last year.