They’re all into weightlifting now, but Bobby Mitchell can remember when the off-season in pro football was just what the name implied.
“Truthfully, I can’t remember doing anything,” said Mitchell, assistant general manager of the Washington Redskins.
Mitchell, who played under Paul Brown at Cleveland and Vince Lombardi at Washington, said: “We just did some running, push-ups and calisthenics in training camp. I know that Jim Brown never lifted a weight in his life. And Ernie Stautner had so much natural strength that he didn’t have to lift a weight, but he could lift a building, anyway.
“The only weight work I ever did was in my last year when Lombardi set up some isometric gadget with ropes, and we were all saying, ‘What is this?’ And Lombardi was screaming, ‘Get to work, Mitchell!’ ”
Lester Hayes, asked about off-season workouts with the Raiders, said: “It’s not said that it’s mandatory, it’s just said that it’s for the team’s benefit. That’s the way Coach Davis says it, and what Coach Davis says around here is law.”
And if a player failed to show?
Hayes: “He’d probably become a member of the Mount Rainier Sasquatches. That’s a semipro team outside of Seattle.”
Said announcer Gary Burbank of Radio WLW in Cincinnati, when a trivia caller asked what famous athlete swore Bob Feller into the Navy: “Must have been Billy Martin. He’s good at that.”
Note: The correct answer is Lt. Cmdr. Gene Tunney, former heavyweight boxing champion. The date was Dec. 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor. Feller, who was paid $40,000 by the Cleveland Indians that year, was sworn in as a chief boatswain mate, making $99 a month.
Trivia Time: What major league park holds the record for most home runs in a season? (Answer below.)
20 Years Ago Today: On July 11, 1967, Tony Perez hit a home run off Catfish Hunter in the 15th inning at Anaheim Stadium to give the National League a 2-1 win over the American League in the longest game in All-Star history. All the runs came on solo homers by third basemen–Perez, Dick Allen and Brooks Robinson.
You can bet that Detroit Tigers Manager Sparky Anderson will save the latest issue of the Sporting News.
John Duxbury, in his column, “The Answer Man,” recalls when the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League hit a league-record nine home runs in a 22-5 win over Sacramento June 22, 1957 at Wrigley Field.
Bert Hamric hit three homers, and Anderson, Jim Fridley, Tom Saffell, Bobby Dolan, Steve Bilko and Jim Baxes hit one each. Anderson’s homer was a grand slam. It was one of only two homers Sparky hit that season in 619 at-bats.
Trivia Answer: Wrigley Field, with 248 homers in 1961. That’s Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, not Chicago.
Quotebook
Minority owner Zev Buffman of the Miami Heat, on proposed promotions for the new National Basketball Assn. team: “The Heat dance team should be redheads. We hope the players won’t be.”