The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 4

The rites of spring WASHINGTON Drenched in Florida sunshine, the spring training game was under way and everyone was as bubbly as ginger ale. Everyone, that is, except the Baltimore Orioles' batboy, who had a large lump in his cheek: his first chaw of tobacco. In the fourth inning he turned as green as grass and departed. Spring is a season for manly rites of passage, and in spring, especially, a lad's reach should exceed his grasp. The next day the batboy was back, and so was the lump.

And among the spectators, the columnist with his eight-year-old recalled Rolfe Humphries' poem, "Polo Time is of the essence. The crowd and players Are the same age always, but the man in the crowd Is older every season. Come on, play ball! Baseball's soothing continuities were exemplified that day by the gentleman seated nearby. Jack Dunn works for today's Orioles. His grandfather owned the minor league Orioles and signed a kid off Baltimore's sandlots, a kid named Ruth.

Today baseball reflects the Stockmanization of life: too much talk about money. David Stockman is supposed to talk about it incessantly, but it is tiresome when sports pages read like releases from the Office of Man- By George F. Will Syndicated Columnist agement and Budget. The Yankees' Dave Winfield hits about .280 and earns a salary the size of the Kemp-Roth tax cut. In 1929, Lefty O'Doul hit .398 with 254 hits a National League record never surpassed.

It earned him a $500 raise. In 1932 he hit "only" .368 and his salary was cut $1,000. With terrible swiftness players become men in the crowd, older every season, so they should read this 1914 editorial in Baseball magazine: "It is, as a rule, a man's own business how he spends his money. But nevertheless we wish to call attention to the fact that many men do so in a very unwise manner. A very glaring instance of this among baseball players is the recent evil tendency to purchase and maintain automobiles.

Put the money away, boys, where it will be safe. You don't need these automobiles. That money will look mighty good later on in life. Think it over, boys." Come to lunch Baseball recently provided some timely food for thought: a reminder that ih spite of the risks, it is still nice to be President, in part because just about anyone you invite will come to lunch. Three days before he was shot, Ronald Reagan lunched with Sandy Koufax, Ernie Banks and some other boys of other summers: baseball immortals.

The two most testing jobs in America are President and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs. Reagan has now held both, and kind of combined them at that lunch. One table was adorned by a broken-down Yale first baseman (George Bush), a Cardinal first baseman (Stan Musial), a Cub second baseman (Billy Herman) and a Pirate outfielder (Ralph Kiner, who spent, as many now do, some of his declining seasons with the Cubs). In addition, some relatively new Washington hands got into a genteel rhubarb with an old Washington hand. Joe Cronin was player-manager of the last Washington Senators team to win a pennant (1933).

He is a defender of the American League's sinister Bolshevism that already has inflicted the "designated hitter" on baseball and may, unless checked, produce even worse desecrations. Paul Volcker, a rangy righthander from the Federal Reserve Board, told Cronin that the American League's incontinent social experimentation, its restless lust for novelty, is the cause of inflation. Jim Baker, the crafty portsider who is White House chief of staff, is a man of soft but wounding words, and he compared the American League's tinkering with baseball to the Anglican communion's tinkering with the. Book of Commmon Prayer. Bush maintained a discreet silence.

He may- want to run for President some day. And supporters of the designated- hitter rule are, alas, allowed to vote. Baseball resembles politics. Consider the analysis by Stanley Coveleski, a Cleveland Indians' outfielder and metaphysician: "The pressure never lets up. Doesn't matter what you did yesterday.

That's history. It's tomorrow that counts. So you worry all the time. It never ends. Lord, baseball is a worrying thing." It isn't for Jonathan Will who, noting his father's blighted life, has become an Orioles fan.

Over the last 22 seasons they have won more games than any other team. For this father, a Cubs fan, the worry is: As the Cubs enteifcthe 36th year of their rebuilding effort, there is the possibility of a player strike. If the Cubs players withhold their labor, will we be able to tell the difference? The Salina Journal Who should pay? The second anniversary of the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant passed recently, and things are still in a mess. For one thing, no one has even come up with a workable idea of what to do with the water which became contaminated as it cooled the damaged reactor. And the repair job may take more years.

Who will pay for it all? The General Public Utilities has $100 million left of the $3 billion it got in insurance funds, but estimates that an additional $700 million will be needed. A federal bailout is possible but not likely, considering the taxpayer screams it would occasion, so the company has come up with another idea an industry-wide insurance plan which would provide money for the plant's cleanup, plus coverage for future accidents at other nuclear plants. That seems sensible. All utilities operating reactors should have a shared responsibility. And those who directly benefit from nuclear energy are the logical ones to bear the costs of nuclear mishaps not the general taxpayers.

Do we really want a Every event sponsored by a local Chamber of Commerce is a "big success." Chambers and most other local civic organizations never have failures. Everything is a smashing success. Sometimes I wonder if managers of Chambers don't realize they are destroying their organization's credibility. Constant horn-blowing isn't honest. The public knows everything can't be coming up roses.

Even Chambers have flops. 1 think about this when I hear folks criticizing newspapers for printing bad news. Surely enlightened citizens understand the nature of news. News is the unusual and the unusual, thank heavens, is usually bad. "Twenty-two airplanes landed at the local airport this week without incident." Is that news? Smart public relations officers for institutions and businesses recognize the public must be served bad news along with the good.

When a fire breaks out at their plant, they don't try to cover up the story. They cooperate fully with the media. Business and institutions realize they must be honest and truthful with the public. They can't bury themselves under a blanket of sweetness and light. They need public confidence and trust.

They must be credible. Many readers of newspapers complain when their paper prints photos of gory accidents. The sight of a dead human body offends them. Letters to the editor pour on to the news desk. Harsh, sometimes cruel, comments are written about the an- CITIZEN SMITH By Lloyd Ballhagen President, Harris Newspapers Frightening new element in gun debate cestry of the editor and the quab'ty of his publication.

Do these readers honestly want to pretend death is not all around us? That bleeding bodies don't litter our highways and streets from time to time? Do they wish to live in a make-believe fantasyland filled with flowers and fluffy clouds and clear blue skies? Are they so timid, so frightened of life, that they don't care to be confronted with suffering, illness, deformity, misery and dying? Can a newspaper be a mirror to the community without showing both the good and bad? No one his right mind enjoys viewing the unpleasantness of life, but no one can totally Ignore it. Without the ugliness of life, there would be no beauty. No newspaper, Chamber, civic group, business or institution can maintain its credibility unless it recognizes truth successes and failures, good and bad. No person can be believed when he claims he has no problems. By Dave Gerard Predictably, the attempted assassination of President Reagan has renewed the debte over gun control.

All the old arguments are in use. But there is something new, or at least newly prominent, in the controversy which should cause far more concern than it does among public officials and citizens alike. It is more important than the immediate question of individual rights; more important even than the several thousand deaths caused each year by firearms. The rapid growth in the possession and use of guns threatens not merely personal safety, but an essential ingredient in the social fabric, in civilization itself. In the past, the principal argument against government regulation or an attempted elimination of handguns involved citizens' rights and convenience.

A law-abiding citizen ought to be able to have a gun if he wanted one, for sport, or simply because he liked guns. Official sanction But increasingly the issue has changed from one of the right to have a gun, to the need to have a gun. The idea that a citizen must arm himself to protect himself is encouraged, not only by organizations like the National Rifle Association and the gun industry, but by public officials. By their inaction on gun control proposals political leaders condone the use of guns; by their actions, they actually encourage it. The Maine legislature last week rushed through a bill authorizing more citizen freedom to use "deadly force," that is guns, to protect their lives and property.

Other legislatures are considering such measures dubbed "shoot your neighbor" laws by their opponents. Clearly this is a reversal of the long, slow climb from the jungle of every man for himself, from the ideal of organized, civilized law and order. We are substituting, reverting to, the idea of individual security in place of collective security. According to legend at least, when Wyatt Earp became marshal of Dodge X-RAf City, his first act was to require all the cowboys to check their guns when they came to town. They no longer were permitted to fend for themselves.

If there was any shooting to be done, he would do it. This not only was one of the first gun control laws; it was a milestone in social history, a mark of civilization, a sign that the west was growing up. It is that progress which is being reversed by the pell-mell rearming of the American citizenry. It is the purpose of the rearming which has so drastically changed the nature of the gun control debate. It was one thing for opponents to oppose gun control because they wanted guns; it is quite another to have them afraid of gun control because they need guns.

The condoning and encouragement of individual arsenals actually discourages the necessary moves to make the By hn '4 McCormally Harris News Correspondent country safer and to combat crime and improve the criminal justice system. There isn't a police force in the country that isn't undermanned and underpaid. And there's wide agreement that crime cannot be controlled without a drastic overhaul of the whole criminal justice system to insure swift deposition of cases and effective punishment or other treatment of offenders. But rather than addressing these problems together, with our interest and tax money, we are seeking individual solutions, each by arming ourselves. Rather than giving up more money to improve our local police force, we are using the money to go buy ourselves a gun, and enrolling in courses to learn how to be gunfighters.

This is clearly a backward march of civilization. The issue is far more than whether the hunter or hobbyist can have the gun he wants; far more than whether an occasional nut can get hold of a gun and shoot the president. The issue involves the growing number of AmerU cans who have given up on the ideal of collective security and think they have-" to have a gun to protect themselves. Until that is reversed, until governors and mayors can say "come to my state (or city) to live and- work. You don't have to own a gun to- be safe here" until that becomes the- political goal, this country is pn downward slide, back from civilization.

Here is good news from good schools "Girl Scout cookies are not tax JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Have you heard enough bad news about our public schools? If so, you may want to pause for a moment to catch up on some good news instead. Here in Jacksonville, the Duval County system is demonstrating what can be accomplished when all the right elements of academic excellence and discipline are put together. This is a middle-sized school system 101,000 students, 34 percent black, embracing diverse social and economic levels. On the face of it, there's nothing to distinguish Jacksonville from other Southern or Southwestern cities with about the same mix.

But something exceptional is happening down here. In these schools, learning comes first. Elsewhere in the country, the scores on student achievement tests have been declining. Here in Jacksonville, the schools have racked up four consecutive years of steady improvement. In one predominantly black high school, 80 percent of the students failed the Florida Student Assessment Test in 1977.

Last year 84 percent of them passed. The system is producing individual scholars. Because of a heavy emphasis on mathematics, test scores in this area have soared dramatically. Last year a senior at Englewood High School, Richard Greene, took statewide By James J. Kilpatrick Syndicated Columnist honors in math.

They're also big on Latin. A senior at Terry Parker High School, Lee Anderson, topped 1,100 other students of Latin last year to win overall first place in the National Junior Classical League Convention. The priorities Sports aren't ignored, but sports ire secondary here. Other competition! have a higher priority. There's an annual Math Field Day for 60 school! in Northeast Florida; you won't be surprised to learn that Duval County took first and second places last year.

The Terry Parker debating team captured the state title in 1980 and placed among the top 10 in the national forensic championships. A couple of weeks hence, on April 24, Jacksonville will host what the sponsors hope will become an annual event an Academic Super Bowl to be waged in the football stadium of Sandalwood High School. A team from Duv- al County will meet a team from Hen- rlco County, head-to-head on the 50-yard line. Two marching bands will make a joyful noise. Cheerleaders will spur the contestants on.

The questions will range from physics and biology to social studies and math, with some tough ones on history, English and languages thrown in. You will guess that all this emphasis upon learning is accompanied by an emphasis on discipline, and you will be right. The state of Florida requires every school system to adopt its own Code of Student Conduct. Jacksonville's is thought to be the toughest in the state. The student who misses nine days in a nine-week grading period is flunked for that period.

The code spells out offenses and punishments, and the code is firmly enforced. As one consequence, vandalism has virtually vanished. A family affair Much of the credit for Jacksonville's performance probably lies with the system's gung-ho luperlntendent, 50- year-old Herb A. Sang. He came here from Kansas City ai an assistant superintendent in 1970 and moved into the top slot in 1976.

His purpose was to weld faculty and parents into a cohesive whole. Last September 71,600 parent! turned out for an open house called "Education Is a Family Affair." In a purvey conducted by the Florida Times-Union, three-fourths of! the parents rated the schools good or: excellent. Perhaps these achievements are: matched in other urban school systems. If so, let us sing their praises, also. We have heard about all we truly need to hear about student preg-: nancies, drug abuse, vandalism, violence, teacher strikes and indifferent academic achievement in the public schools.

Last week we read the find- Ings of Dr. James Coleman, to the effect that private schools are better. Maybe so. But public schools don't have to be inferior. Jacksonville proves the point.

Letters Wanted The Journal welcomes letters to the" editor but dots not to print them. The briefer they are the better chance they have. AH are subject to condensation and editing. Writer's name must be signed with full for publication. Utters become the property of The Journal.

Meditations And the fruit of righteousness is'- sown in peace by them that make June! 3:18 Be a peacemaker and you wUl be sowing seeds of love and kindness in places where envy and strife exist..