Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 19, 1994 TAG: 9407200058
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
LAND? NO! There's nothing to an oft-repeated rumor about Municipal Field's future. The word was that Roanoke College, which has considered starting baseball and softball programs, wanted to swap a parcel of land to Salem in exchange for Municipal Field. Dick Henberger, vice president for business affairs at the college, said the tale is interesting but without basis.
``If we were going to start playing softball, it would make sense that we'd use the Moyer Complex, a great facility,'' Henberger said. ``And if we'd be just starting baseball, the last thing we'd need is a 4,000-seat stadium. We'd probably just put a baseball field on campus and put in some aluminum bleachers.''
What does have some basis, however, is Roanoke College's interest in starting those two sports. Scott Allison, the school's athletic director, said there has been student interest in developing those programs.
SMALL YARDS: Columnist John Steadman of The (Baltimore) Evening Sun and Baltimore Orioles public relations chief Charles Steinberg officially discovered what Birds pitchers had suspected. The power alleys and center-field distances are shorter than advertised at Camden Yards.
Steadman and Steinberg measured the distances separately. Each found the distances to left-center, center and right-center are about 10 feet shorter than the 364, 410 and 373, respectively, painted on the walls.
BAD BOOT: The World Cup exceeded expectations in almost every way but in the final minutes. Brazil's shootout championship over Italy was the first in Cup history, and the sport's governing body, FIFA, should make it the last. Soccer is a team sport. Target practice is no way to end the world's greatest sporting event. The Olympic gold-medal hockey battle in the Lillehammer Games in February produced a similar disappointment. Sudden death certainly is preferable.
THE NEEDY: The Summer Olympics open in Atlanta two years from tonight. The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games wanted 10 ``partner'' sponsorships signed four years before the Games. The ACOG has eight. Making a $40 million deal isn't easy.
WIDE LOAD: While baseball could make its games shorter by ordering umpires to call the rulebook's vertical interpretation of the strike zone, it seems the zone is shrinking top to bottom but getting wider.
NO HANDS: The NBA, after its muscle-bound playoffs of the spring, is going to get tougher on hand-checking. ``Maybe the extra shove designed to slow down a player really isn't a ticky-tacky foul because it impedes progress of the ball,'' said NBA commissioner David Stern, who also has underlings seriously considering adoption of the trapezoid-shaped lane used in international hoops to clean up play in the paint.
BIG HIT: Although his batting average has continued to flirt with the Mendoza-Uecker Line of .200 for a couple of months, Michael Jordan continues to produce big numbers elsewhere in the Class AA Southern League.
Consider these concessions figures reported by The Tennessean newspaper from Jordan's trips with Birmingham to play at Nashville:
Hot dogs - 300 per game without Jordan, 4,000 with; cases of beer - four or five without, 120 with; soft drinks - 600 without, 7,000 with; hot pretzels - 25 without, 500 with.
Jordan and his Barons teammates have played before 41 percent of the league's attendance this season.
by CNB