Scorecard

GROUNDS FOR DISBARMENT?
This week an Edmonds, Wash., sports memorabilia company will begin test-marketing the Ken Griffey Junior Milk Chocolate Bar. The company apparently doesn't mind that Griffey, the 19-year-old Seattle Mariners outfielder, is allergic to chocolate.

GRADUATING WITH HONORS
The Kentucky basketball program has been under a cloud because of alleged NCAA rules violations, but coach Jerry Claiborne's Wildcat football team has quietly done the school proud. Last week the College Football Association gave its annual academic achievement award to Kentucky for graduating 90% of the players who entered the university in the fall of 1983—the highest percentage of any of the 53 CFA member institutions that disclosed their graduation rates. (Thirteen CFA schools did not submit their graduation figures.) The only other schools to have won the award in its nine years of existence are Notre Dame, Duke and Virginia.

LATE POSTINGS

The Maryland Racing Commission last week approved a simple innovation that could have a far-reaching impact on harness racing. Starting May 24, bettors at Freestate Raceway, one of the state's three harness tracks, will make their selections without knowing the horses' post positions. Wagering will stop a minute or two before the race, at which point the starting slots will be drawn.

Proponents say that the change will revive interest in the declining sport by making races less predictable and assuring more lucrative payoffs at the pari-mutuel windows. As any good handicapper can tell you, post position can mean everything in harness racing; horses who draw the inside posts can have a tremendous edge, especially at shorter tracks. "The number 8 post is a seven-length disadvantage right off the bat," says Tom Aronson, executive secretary of racing for the American Horse Council. Because horses in the inside posts are bet on so heavily, their odds drop; even though these horses frequently win, they don't pay off much. The new system will introduce a greater element of uncertainty, and as a result there should be fewer prohibitive favorites.

Some harness-racing bettors decry the new system because it makes wagering more of a crapshoot. But Aronson points out that unpredictability is an asset to the prospering sport of dog racing, in which favored greyhounds are often bumped or even tripped up by other dogs in the race, In fact, Aronson decided to pursue the idea of a late post-position draw in March while watching dog races in Florida.

"Every innovative move in this sport was initially resisted," says Stan Bergstein, executive vice president of Harness Tracks of America. "Objections and skepticism might be an indication that it's going to work."

COAST TO COAST

Bill Duff hoped to do a timed lap at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway last Saturday, but it rained. After 80 days and 3,632 miles on the road, he probably deserved a breather. Duff, a 27-year-old Texan who was paralyzed from the waist down in an April 1982 auto accident, has been propelling himself across the country and through the collective conscience of America in a 20-pound racing wheelchair. His goal, along with reaching New York City by June 28, is to raise money for the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.

Duff is an accomplished wheelchair marathoner and track athlete, but since he left Los Angeles on Jan. 17, his stamina has been tested by a 2,000-foot climb out of the Salt River Canyon in Arizona and 45-mile-per-hour head winds in the Texas panhandle. He has worn out 11 pairs of gloves and 16 tires, covering almost 50 miles a day in weather ranging from 90� heat to—36� windchill. An eight-member Wheels Across America support team has accompanied him along his wildly circuitous route, which was charted to hit as many large cities as possible. "If I'd gone straight across the U.S., I'd be done already," says Duff.