Early-season losers Wisconsin and Coach Jeff Sauer are now champs

Calvin Griffith of the Twins is a throwback to an era when owners owned and players played. But times have changed

April 9, 1965 was a very special date: That day the Milwaukee—soon to be Atlanta—Braves played the Detroit Tigers in an exhibition game that was the first event ever staged at Atlanta's Fulton...

This is the story of an event that didn't happen. But that isn't to say this is an uneventful story. There were events all right, several of them, and dramatic ones, too, having to do with courage...

The sport of championship croquet has always been played in the moneyed locales of Palm Beach, Bermuda and the Hamptons; it generally has been a passion of the privileged, a byword of the...

4—Lane Stewart19—Illustration by Sam Q. Weissman24-27—Jerry Wachter28—Manny Millan29—George Tiedemann30—Manny Millan31—Peter Read Miller32—Andy Hayt33—Richard Mackson36—Barton Silverman (right)42,...

GREG ZAFFNORWOOD, MASS.Zaff, a Williams College junior, is believed to be the first player in four years to have been named an All-America in both squash and tennis (Division III). He recently...

PRO BASKETBALL—The April 2 NBA strike appeared almost inevitable when, after two days of promising negotiations, talks between players and management broke off on March 24, after less than half an...

DOWN ON THE FARMSSir:I'd like to thank you for the story of and by Bobby Mitchell ("And You Dream About Tomorrow," March 21). For many years I have dreamed about playing one professional sport or...

LOOKING BACKWARD

•Joe Forte, basketball official working an NCAA West Regional game, to reporters when a press table phone rang just as he was running past: "If that's my wife, tell her I'm not here."

Astounding Georgia won the NCAA East Regional with big upsets of St. John's and North Carolina

Was it the 24-year gap between games that did it? Or the fussin' and feud-in' proximity of neighbors who live barely 75 miles apart, as the bluegrass grows? Or the importance of the occasion—the...

Ralph Sampson spent much of the final game of his college career watching rainbows. Missing again was the pot of gold he'd been seeking for four years. These rainbows arced from the uncannily...

They've won 25 straight and have pummeled opponents by an average of 18 points a game, the very margin by which they whipped Villanova, 89-71, in the Midwest Regional final on Sunday. So who but...

Martina Navratilova's game was sharper than ever as she turned the Virginia Slims into a bloodletting

On the wall next to her kitchen phone in Wilmington, Del., Jean Smith has a scribble board listing the names and telephone numbers of her nine children. About halfway down, between Sue's and...

With its tougher style of play and deeper talent, the National League has left the American in its dust

One reason for National League superiority is Montreal's Gary Carter, who talks a good game and plays a better one

At Rickwood Field, home of the University of Alabama in Birmingham baseball team, the players were limbering up and UAB Coach Harry Walker, who can teach hitting and bump gums with the best of...

The catcalls began immediately after Dodger First Baseman Greg Brock booted a routine grounder in the second inning of an exhibition game with Montreal. They were heard again two innings later...

The man they call Trader Jack allowed himself a moment of self-satisfaction. "If you look back at what we had," San Diego General Manager Jack McKeon was saying, "we've made so much improvement in...

"A long time ago," says 30-year-old Mike Krukow, "I learned that roles are not given, they're earned." Maybe so, but the Giants have certainly handed Krukow a big part for 1983. They traded their...

After the Braves won their first divisional title in 13 years and set a home-attendance record of 1.8 million, owner Ted Turner opened his coffers to fortify the club. Nonetheless, Atlanta will be...

Let's face it, all the title Big Red Machine ever meant was hitting. Rose, Morgan, Bench, Perez, Foster: Boom! No wonder the Reds never got off the ground last year, when they relied on pitching...

Three seasons after they nearly parlayed speed, pitching and defense into a World Series berth, the Houston Astros have now been reduced to gambling and dreaming.

Over the winter Whitey Herzog, manager of the world champions, hit the Rockies for skiing, the Ozarks for fishing, Japan to promote a brand of beer and the ever-treacherous Banquet Trail (it...

Bill Virdon walked the Expo training camp in West Palm Beach this spring, fungo bat in hand, observing and instructing. He spoke measuredly, almost blandly, his eyes gazing attentively from behind...

They had already traded five players for him, so when Rightfielder Von Hayes requested No. 9 as his uniform number, the Phillies were eager to accommodate him. Manager Pat Corrales, who already...

He was the first player in the Pirate clubhouse every morning. He'd run a mile and then spend half an hour on a stationary bicycle. He worked as hard as any of his teammates, and if fitness and...

Ron Cey wants it understood that he is not just another former Dodger infielder running around looking odd in somebody else's uniform. "I feel terrific," says Cey in Cub pinstripes. "This is a new...

On opening day at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, Tom Seaver smiled impishly when the color guard from the local Marine Corps battalion appeared in the Mets dugout before their game with the...

The pace was slow in Fort Myers, Fla., where the Royals train. The big news in camp came on March 1, the day DH Hal McRae reported. The new contract McRae signed last fall provides a bonus for...

After the '82 season, when his own leftfielder, Steve Kemp, and Seattle Pitcher Floyd Bannister became free agents, Manager Tony LaRussa was asked which one he'd prefer.

John McNamara is a soothing fellow, the perfect analgesic for a California team that emerged from the American League playoffs with its players' psyches battered and World Series hopes shattered....

Not long after the A's fired Billy Martin last fall, they issued a statement listing the qualifications they sought in a new manager. Among these were "a strong personal self-discipline, patience,...

The ever-rebuilding Twins may finally be getting better. After a horrible 16-54 start in 1982, Minnesota won 44 of its last 92 games to suggest it might be a competitive big league team after all....

The Mariners have lately taken to running a mission for lost souls—and with better results on the average than most establishments of this sort can claim. Last year they rescued Al Cowens from the...

Manager Doug Rader was giving special instruction to two young in-fielders last month at the Ranger camp in Pompano Beach, Fla. A four-time Gold Glove third baseman in the early 1970s, Rader...

Outside Miami Stadium this spring, a simple hand-painted wooden sign marked a prominent vacancy in the reserved parking lot. The sign said Earl. With Earl Weaver up in the broadcasting booth, Joe...

Reliever Dave Rozema was pedaling an exercise bike and trading insults with Infielder Enos Cabell one afternoon at the Tigers' Lakeland, Fla. training camp.

Cecil Cooper was ruminating one fine spring day in Arizona on his persistent anonymity. "Maybe it's my fault for picking the wrong years to do well," he said with the merest suggestion of irony....

On a warm South Florida morning last month, a man hiding middle-aged spread under a blue sweat suit jogged in the outfield at Fort Lauderdale's Yankee Stadium. Mickey Lolich making a comeback? No....

Interesting team, these Red Sox. Two of the owners, Buddy Le-Roux and Jean Yawkey, can't stand the sight of one another. Their best player, Rightfielder Dwight Evans, goes in for contract talks...

In 1982 the Blue Jays became downright respectable. They won more games (78) and finished higher (tied for sixth) than they had in their previous five years of existence. Perhaps most encouraging...

Three interstate highways dissect the city of Cleveland, but not, as some thought last season, Cleveland Stadium. Indians Chief Scout Dan Carnevale was quoted as saying, "We had a hole at second...

As every serious baseball fan knows, the best way to start a summer day is with a heaping helping of big league box scores

When NBC paired Joe Garagiola with Vin Scully, Tony Kubek got the thumb

A race backed by a bourbon company is giving little Latonia a big name