The Times from Shreveport, Louisiana • Page 17

Section editor: kent heithou. 459-3233 WEDNESDAY, August 12, 1992 Scoreboard: 2B Horse racing: 3B Classified: 5B mtm PREP FOOTBALL if BY THE i NUMBERS QB baseba razDoir in SCOIrOS Today, he flies to San Jose, to play baseball in the Area Code Games. After three days "Great Woodlawn player heads for National One Showcase and Area Code Games. Texas League Shreveport 3, Jackson 2 American League Baltimore 3, Toronto 0 Cleveland 3, Boston 1 Detroit 5, New York 1 Minnesota 3, Texas 2 Chicago 10, Oakland 6 Kansas City 9, Seattle 6 California 1, Milwaukee 0 (10) National League Montreal 3, Chicago 2, (17) Houston 6, San Francisco 3 Los Angeles 8, Cincinnati 4 San Diego 8, Atlanta 4 New York 2, Pittsburgh 0 St. Louis 7, Philadelphia 6 (Standings, Page 4B) in California, he flies to Cincinnati for the National One Showcase, a baseball camp featuring the top 40 high school seniors in the By SCOTT FERRELL The Times coach John Shoptaugh said.

"I'm happy he has the opportunity to go to the camps." Frazier, though, realizes the time away could put him behind on the football field. "I'm going to miss most of two-a-days and then when I come back, we scrimmage the next day," Frazier said. It doesn't bother Shoptaugh. "Tyrone is the type of athlete that knows what he has to do. What he misses, he can make up." The question that one day may face Frazier remains: Football or baseball? "There's a big decision in baseball (the draft), but you can never count football out," Frazier said.

get to go." Said Woodlawn baseball coach Wayne Rathbun: "It's a great feeling. I may never have another kid get a chance to perform at this level." Local sponsors helped contribute $1,900 for Frazier to be able to make the two trips. "I'd like to thank the people that have supported me," Frazier said. "Without them, it would have been hard to go." Frazier, who has already attracted attention with his bat and 4.3 speed in the 40-yard dash, will be playing centerfield on the trip. Last season at Woodlawn he played shortstop and pitcher.

The camp also gives him a chance to raise his stock for next summer's baseball draft. It is a fact not lost on Frazier. "There will be a lot of Major League scouts there. I want to relax and I want to do my best. If I can do that, I'm sure they will be pleased," Frazier said.

Frazier will miss four days of football while attending the baseball camps. His absence, though, is just part of a juggling act at quarterback for the Knights this summer. Melvin Morris, Frazier's backup, has been at Boys State. He returns to practice on Thursday. The Knights have only one quarterback for today's practices.

"It's just something we have to deal with," first-year Woodlawn nation. Such is life when vnn are It is football season for Wood-lawn High School's Tyrone Fra-zier. It is also baseball season. Just depends on when you see him. Frazier spent Tuesday playing quarterback for the Knights' football team.

He is considered to be among the South's top recruits by many analysts. a top football Frazier and baseball recruit. "It's a great honor," Frazier said. "This is a big event that is just starting out. It's an honor to BASEBALL: Baltimore Orioles at Toronto Blue Jays, 6:30 p.m., ESPN.

The Orioles try to gain ground in the AL East as they take on the division leading Blue Jays. BASEBALL HISTORY by the game Salty Parker left a mark on Shreveport baseball NFL Mora finds game films rewarding Long way to go: But plenty of time before season opener. LA CROSSE, Wis. (AP) Coach Jim Mora had warm words for everyone especially free agent kicker Cary Blan-chard after the New Orleans Saints' 34-31 preseason victory over the Chicago Bears. It was the Saints' first obstacle in preparing for the regular season and defense of their NFC Western Division championship.

"I was pleased looking at the films," Mora told a news conference Tuesday night. "As far as individual, sterling performances, I don't know if I want to say this guy was super in the game because I don't think that was the case. I think there were a number of guys and positions I was pleased with. "We're a long way from where we need to be four weeks from now when we play the Eagles. But we thankfully have four weeks left to practice.

"But I thought we made great strides as a football team this past week and, hopefully, if we can make similar strides each week up through the Philadelphia Eagles game, then we'll be ready to go." Preseason notwithstanding, Mora likes to win and had high praise for Blanchard. Blan-chard, subbing for the injured Morten Andersen, kicked a 26-yard field goal on the last play of the game to beat the Bears. "Even though it was a preseason game, to him it was just as important as any game," Mora said. "And on the sideline, prior to the kick, he was very calm, very confident. We asked him just before we ran our last play 'You want it in the middle of the field, the right hash, the left He said, 'I don't care, And he went out there and booted it in." "I feel better about things now after seeing Cary doing what he did last night than I did a week ago when I hadn't seen him perform in a game.

I think Morten's going to be fine. But, hey, I think Cary did a nice job. I like watching those guys on the sideline and stuff, too. He was pretty cool about things." As a coach for the Giants 1979 With former Sports manager Mel McGaha (left) in 1961. in his last year as a playercoach for the Shreveport Sports in 1951.

Salty added spice to local ba Friend expects Magic to return LOS ANGELES (AP) Magic Johnson has a decision to make. Friend and former teammate Byron Scott says Johnson has already made it. Magic will return to the Los Angeles Lakers, Scott says. "Earvin's coming back," the Orange County Register quoted Scott as saying in Tuesday's editions. "He said he got back (from Barcelona) about an hour ago and felt great.

He's going to play this season. Count on it. "He wants to return and show everyone (he can still play although he has the AIDS virus). He hasn't lost that will to compete," Scott said. President honors Olympic athletes WASHINGTON (AP) President Bush on Tuesday welcomed home the U.S.

Olympic team, telling the athletes at a White House ceremony, "You know what it means to make America a winner." With his wife Barbara at his side in an East Room ceremony, Bush ticked off the names of several U.S. medal winners and said the entire team had made Americans proud. "Whether you won a gold, silver, bronze or simply gave your best, I believe that you all are winners in the eyes of your countrymen," Bush said. Bush hailed the Barcelona Games as historic: "This was an Olympics without boycotts, without terrorism, without politics and that's exactly as it ought to be." Golf game insult par for the court DETROIT (AP) The Michigan Court of Appeals will decide whether insulting someone's golf game injures their reputation. The three-judge panel of Thomas J.

Brennan, Maureen P. Reilly and Roman S. Gribbs will decide whether a freelance writer who sued Denny McLain was damaged by remarks the former pitcher, now a radio personality, made on the air about his attire and his golf game. Richard S. Havens sued McLain and WXYT-AM following a Sept.

18, 1990, broadcast in which McLain said, among other things, "This guy lost more balls yesterday than any human being in the history of the game of golf." McLain also said Havens wore what appeared to be swimming trunks on the golf course. Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert J. Colombo Jr. dismissed the case last year, saying Havens' shorts did look like a bathing suit and that Havens' reputation had not been hurt. Man of summer: F.J.

Parker was involved with the game he loved all his life. seasons. He also played a couple at Beaumont and another season with Dallas. In all, he played more than 900 games in the Texas League. In 1942, Salty managed the Sports to a league pennant, this city's first since 1919.

As a Detroit farmhand, Salty got an 11-game look with the Tigers in early 1936. His second-base partner was Charlie Geh-ringer. Those were also the Tigers of Tommy Bridges and Schoolboy Rowe and Hank Greenberg, and manager Mickey Cochrane. Mazur was a Tigers' batboy in 1936. He remembers that General Motors, because of its ties with Detroit owner Walter Briggs, threw a season-opening banquet for the ballplayers in the Book Cadillac Hotel.

The on ly players who showed up were Parker (known as Francis Parker in Detroit) and Gehringer. They were told to turn their plates over, and under each plate was a key to a new Chevrolet. One thing unique about Salty as a manager, Mazur adds, "is that when he argued with an umpire he never faced him. He always turned his back on him, always argued backwards." In 1970, Salty was given a baseball with a fluidly written inscription: "To Salty Parker. With respect and best wishes.

Roberto Clemente." Clemen te was the ball player he remembered the most, Salty said in 1973, two years after Clemente was killed in a plane See BASEBALL, Page 2B Salty, who got his nickname because of a fondness for salted peanuts, was attached to organized baseball for sixty years. He played the game, coached it, managed it, scouted it. "Baseball was all he knew," said Al Mazur, a teammate of Parker's on the Shreveport Sports in the late 1940s. "He never did any other job except winter jobs, like running gas stations." He came out of East St. Louis, 111., born in 1913 but a stronger claim to him can be staked by Shreveport.

He and his wife, Thelma, who preceded him in death by six months, for years lived on Arthur Street in Broadmoor. Salty, an infielder, played for and managed the old Sports in the Texas League through nine By BILL MclNTYRE The Times A dozen chapters were torn from the pages of Shreveport's baseball history last month when Salty Parker died in Houston. You don't need to put quote marks around "Salty." His true handle was Francis James, but hardly anyone remembers that. Maybe his closest friends did. Then again, he had so many friends in the game a lot of people probably did know what F.

J. stood for. COLUMN The thing is, lumpy '98 mascot looks bad JACK MITCHELL (, jj our licks quietly in the worldwide arena, getting hammered for our history over and over again. Come 1996, though, the world will come visiting right at the heart of the South and I want everything to be just right. I want Atlanta which, I might add, I don't pay taxes in to spare no expense in rolling out the red carpet.

Everybody should leave Atlanta feeling lucky to have made the trip. Beyond that, I want the Games of the XXVIth Olympiad to be as perfect as the city that hosts them. I want every winner to set a record and every also-ran to be proud of the effort. I want the U.S. to finish with more gold medals than controversies, I want the Dream Team to come back with Dominique Wilkins and I want swimmer Ron Karnaugh, whose father died during the Barcelona opening ceremonies, to win a pocketful of gold.

Finally, since I've got to wait four years before any of this other stuff can happen, I want somebodv to do something about WHATIZIT. Give it a name or give it a boot out the door. It just isn't what I had in mind. Jack Mitchell is a Times sports writer. isn't a name, it's a plea.

"Help us figure out what the heck this thing is." To be completely honest, Olympic mascots are pretty insignificant in the overall scheme of things. Anybody who saw the Barcelona mascot Cobi, the pointy-headed dog knows that. Poor Cobi was uglier than a Kim Zmeskel balance beam routine. But as a son of the South and a wholehearted supporter of holding the Olympics in Dixie, I want everything to be perfect in 1996. I want the XXVIth Olympiad to be the best ever.

The South deserves it. We deserve it. As a region, we've taken Maybe I'm just being unduly pessimistic, but I don't think the 1996 Olympics has gotten off on such a good foot. Or fin. Or protoplasmic blob.

Or whatever it is that passes for feet on "WHATIZIT," the mascot for the Summer Games in Atlanta four years from now. Unveiled at the Olympic closing ceremonies in Barcelona Sunday, the computer-generated character that looks a little like a fish and a little like a lump of penicillin. I guess the thing is politically correct, since it apparently has no gender, race or political affiliation. With stars in its eyes, lightning bolts for eyebrows and purple sneakers, it will be offensive only to people with good taste. Still, if you can't think of a name for the darned thing, how good a concept is it? WHATIZIT.