Magazine’s Flattery Makes Him See Red

As a longtime Red Auerbach watcher, Bill Livingston of the Cleveland Plain Dealer couldn’t handle it. Sports Illustrated, it seems, painted a portrait of the Boston Celtics’ general manager that made him sound like the “nation’s doting uncle.�

“I’ve seen his act,� protests Livingston. “Red Auerbach is a bullying, conniving old maestro of the double-deal and the broken rule. He’s a leftover from the dance hall and dingy gym era of the NBA. . . . The game has moved uptown since Red’s early days, but Auerbach’s ethics can still be as dark as a blind alley, as crabbed and cramped as the upper berth on the night train to Fort Wayne.�

Livingston continues: “I’ll grant that he’s a genius, but a dark one.

“I mean, really, would you want to be like a 65-year-old man who runs onto the court during a players’ brawl and shouts at Moses Malone, ‘Hit me, you big SOB.’ “I’ve always regretted that Malone didn’t make Auerbach the first redhead on the moon by taking him up on that one.�

Randy (Tex) Cobb, the heavyweight boxer who doubles as an actor, told USA Today: “I love acting. It’s easy for me. All you do is look in the camera, smile and lie with charm. I learned how to do that watching Don King promote his fights.�

The way the Dallas Cowboys Weekly tells it, if they ever make a movie about Roger Staubach, they should call it “The Comeback Kid.�

Staubach, according to the publication, brought the Cowboys from behind to win 23 times in the fourth quarter. Fourteen times the victories came in the last two minutes.

Glenn Sears, after winning the ARCA 200 at Daytona with a sprint car dirt track engine in his Pontiac, was asked how the engine responded to a high-banked paved oval.

Said Sears: “Once you put the hood down on it, it don’t know where it is.�

Leave it to Pete Rose. He’s not only predicting he’ll break Ty Cobb’s record, he’s picking the date.

Rose needs 95 hits to surpass Cobb’s record of 4,191 career hits. Rose says he’ll get the historic hit the night of Aug. 26 when Cincinnati plays host to St. Louis.

“I think I can get 125-150 hits this year,� Rose told Milton Richman of United Press International. “When I’m hitting well, I’ll play; when I’m not hitting well, I won’t play. People keep asking me whether I’ll be able to manage and go after the record at the same time. Believe it or not, I can keep my mind on two different things. My main thing will be the team winning.�

Wait a Minute: O.J. Simpson told Sports Illustrated that Doug Flutie wouldn’t have been right for Buffalo because the Bills need a “big, strong guy who can stand in the pocket and throw the ball through the wind.�

O.J. said the winds off Lake Erie would take the throws of a scrambler and “turn them upside down.�

Jack Kemp must have smiled at that one. Kemp, a 6-footer, was one of the best scramblers in the business and he took the Bills to AFL championships in 1964 and 1965.

Quotebook

University of Kansas basketball Coach Larry Brown, asked how the capacity of Allen Fieldhouse is only 15,200 when crowds in the Wilt Chamberlain days were announced as 17,000-plus: “Bigger fannies.�