Vicky Can, and Will, Beat You Several Ways

The National Sports Review reported that female jockey Vicky Aragon and male jockey Marty Wentz both were fined $400 and placed on probation for beating each other with their whips during a race at Longacres near Seattle.

“A few weeks later,” the publication said, “Aragon was in another race when, for no good reason, she took her whip and whacked Victor Mercado upside the head. She then belted him again. She was suspended for 21 days.

“In reporting the incident, KING-TV announcer Tony Ventrella told his viewers that Aragon’s fetish for whipping fellow riders was not an unprecedented thing. Then he showed a clip of the film ‘Ben Hur.’ ”

How intimidating was Dick Butkus? Said former NFL center Bill Curry, now the head coach at Georgia Tech: “Just to think about him was intimidating. I’d come up over the ball and instead of thinking, ‘I’m going to take three steps at a 45-degree angle and cut him off and I’m going to knock his knees out from under him,’ I’d wonder, ‘What’s he going to do to me now? Where is he?’ ”

Add Butkus: Admitting he never was able to intimidate Johnny Unitas, he said, “Unitas, he was different, he was cold. He never even acknowledged you were there. You could be yelling at him and he wouldn’t even look at you. He had no reaction at all. At least not until he completed the pass. Then he gave you that smile. That damn smile.”

Trivia Time: What Olympic Games titles did former heavyweight champions Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier win? (Answer below.)

Said Southern University basketball Coach Ben Jobe after Friday night’s 126-81 loss to the St. John’s Redmen: “We tried to play a fast-paced game, but you can’t ambush the Redmen. Custer found that out.”

DeLoss Dodds, the Texas athletic director who fired Fred Akers as the football coach, is the same man who pink-slipped basketball Coach Abe Lemons a few years back.

Lemons, asked afterward if he was bitter toward Dodds, said: “No, but I’m going to put a window in the bottom of my car.”

Asked why, he said, “So I can see the look on his face when I run over him.”

Add Akers: Arkansas football Coach Ken Hatfield said of the firing: “I don’t know any other coach in America that’s ever been fired with a 74% won-lost record.”

USC fired Elmer (Gloomy Gus) Henderson after an 87% record in 1919-24. The Rams fired George Allen after a 74% record in 1960-66 and Chuck Knox after a 78% record in 1966-70.

Hubie Brown is under fire in New York, but Houston Coach Bill Fitch said, “I think the Knicks are going to be a good basketball team a month from now.”

As for the critics who say the game has passed Brown by, Fitch said, “Those people don’t have to coach against him.”

Said Boston’s Larry Bird: “You never get nothin’ by Hubie Brown. He knows every one of our plays, our best shots, our best moves, which way we turn. You can’t pull no punches with him. I think by January they’ll have it together. They’re gonna be tough.”

Trivia Answer: Patterson won the middleweight title in 1952, Ali the light-heavyweight title in 1960 and Frazier the heavyweight title in 1964.

Quotebook

Former light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore, on his new diet: “You can eat anything you want, as long as you don’t swallow it.”