The Evening Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 10

2 THE EVENING SUN, Friday, June 10, 1983 Full disclosure The people who foQus on the O's eyes i and color perception. Players who lack 2020 vision (the ability to see an object of a certain size from 20 feet) get glasses or contact lenses from optometrist Elliott Myrowitz. Although eye care is their chief concern, the O's experts have also been collecting a variety of data from players. They hope to analyze the information in a year Extra Innings 1 By John Fairhall Evening Sun Staff 1 A HEN BASEBALL fans talk about Ted Williams I III 'nvar'ay bring up his eyesight, as if they'd WW uncovered the secret to his awesome hitting. Williams remembers how the story got started.

"The Navy doctor who checked my eyes in 1942 said I had 2010 vision. From then on the writers always gave my eyes more credit than they deserved for the hitting I did," Williams says in "My Turn at Bat," the autobiography he wrote with John Underwood. Although Williams believes the writers exaggerated, the legend lives on. Maybe it's one reason eye care is of concern to ballclubs, including the Orioles, who've been their own Baltimore experts to spring training the last four years. The eye care team led by Dr.

Herman K. Goldberg does on-the-spot testing in Miami of 170 major and minor league players. Screening includes visual acuity in lay terms, the ability to distinguish objects far off and nearby depth perception, muscle balance, overall eye health the normal population can see, they players are all in the upper end." Since glasses and contacts bring visual acuity up to par, depth perception would seem a critical factor for hitters. "Intuitively you would say yes, but it really hasn't been proven to what degree depth perception influences how well a hitter will do," says Myrowitz. "I know it's important, but how important I can't say." The youthful optometrist tends to rule out any conclusions linking good vision and good hitting.

"It's confusing because there will be some players who have 2010 vision, which is just amazingly good. And you would say if their vision was the total factor they'd be hitting .400." Vision obviously isn't the only factor in hitting a conclusion anyone can reach by watching the performances of bespectacled players like John Lowenstein and Dan Ford of the O's, and the Angels' Reggie Jackson. Nevertheless, all hitting starts with good eyesight, as Ralph Rowe, the O's batting coach, explains. See INNINGS, B6, Col. 1 or so and determine what correlations may exist between vision quality and other characteristics including hitting.

At this stage, Myrowitz will hazard some unscientific generalizations. The first is that the O's eyes are sharper than ours. "They all have good depth perception. To the limit of our testing, some scored perfect on the scale," he says. "It's very unusual to see a ballplayer with poor depth perception.

On the scale of visual acuity, if you take what Great Escapes King's Gunslinger' is bizarre and familiar Health dubs look like By Wiley Hall 3rd the new singles' bars Evening Sun Staff rOU GUYS know Stephen King. He's the author of "The Shin-inn "CnlnmV, "Tl. XI Stand" and countless others. People read his books on the bus and in doc-' tors' waiting rooms. They pass dogeared copies on to their friends, saying, "You ought to check this out." Movies have been made.

How does one describe a Stephen JCing novel? He dabbles in demo-nology and psy By Michael Wentzel Evening Sun Staff MODEL CHRISTIE Brink-ley probably appears on more magazine covers than anyone except Ronald Reagan, but the appearance of the statuesque blond surely sells more magazines than our broad-shouldered, dark-haired president. Christie appears on the cover of the June 9 issue of Rolling Stone ($1.50) hawking the main story, "Looking for Mr. Goodbody Health Clubs: The New Singles' Bars." The cover story has two problems: chology (of the twisted sort). He ik I Tfim ift Ljtf i Other worlds is a supernatural-ist and perhaps a bit of a mystic. His novels are horrific and mysterious, and there is a bit of the poet in his prose.

In one novel, a vampire roamed Magazine rack 1 That's the last to be seen of Christie, and the article itself is pretty thin stuff. Aaron Latham, who manufactured the tale (and eventually the film) of the Urban Cowboy, "The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger" is a limited edition with color illustrations by Michael Whelan. who apparently can find a breakthrough pattern in a cloud. The reader also must encounter Lori, Leslie and Roger, the male stripper. "Around the same time Lori and Leslie joined the Sports Connection," Latham writes, "so did a young man named Roger Men-ache.

When Roger saw Lori, he was attracted to her well-developed chest. For weeks, he simply admired her chest across a crowded gym or a crowded exercise class." Then Roger arranges his schedule to be with Lori, sharing the same dances, classes and grunts of exertion. "And while he was grunting," Lathan writes, "Roger loved to watch Lori's chest work out. With all that exercise, that chest kept getting better and better, and more magnetic." Latham's story rarely rises above this level, a kind of Love Boat in the health spa. People really do go to health clubs to look better, to become healthier, to meet a companion or to find sex.

But that is about as dramatic and worthwhile a discovery as the trend toward vinyl replacement windows in older, inner city neighborhoods. The June issue of Science 83 ($2) is another superb effort from this excellent magazine with reports on Frank Oppenheimer's career in physics and on the blacklist, bungled plans for nuclear power plants, human-like chimps and the haunting rituals of burial and mourning in Greece. Ameri-cana's June edition ($1.95) makes enjoyable and informative visits to South Pass City, the U.S.S. Constitution Museum in Boston, the restored Vermont summer home of Robert Todd Lincoln and a courtroom where lawyers argue historical cases. June's American Film ($2) reports on the problems of repertory movie theaters, Ingmar Bergman's last film, Home Box Office moviemaking and the return of 3D and profiles of George Lucas, the creator of "Star Wars," who seems troubled in spite of his lighthearted films and all his fame and money.

Wendell Berry theorizes on a human's need for contact with nature in a fine essay in the June edition of Blair Ketchum's Country Journal ($1.75.) through a New England town like a mama in a supermarket. In another, grade-school teachers, corporate executives, lunatics and grandmothers chose sides in an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. Scientists and stuffy adults insist there is nothing in those shadows but an absence of light. "Don't be so' sure," says King. "I knew it!" gasp his readers.

But when King writes a science fiction novel and steps out of the shadows of our world into another universe entirely, he is seized by a fear that his readers would find such a concept unspeakably weird, inconceivable, bizarre. He spurns his mass-market publisher and puts out a limited trade edition on expensive paper and with lush full-color illustrations by Michael Whelan, to be circulated only within the closed circles of the science fiction fan. You see, people know spooks exist, we can hear them howling each night as we pass the cemetery. They leap and moan and rattle their chains whenever the wind whispers and the lights go out. Other worlds? Bah! The novel in question is called "The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger," a novel King describes as the first stanza of a much larger work, "The Dark Tower." To date, it is the only stanza, and you'll have to hunt to find it.

This may be King's first novel, and his last. He got the idea for it as a sophomore in college, after reading Robert Browning's, "The Song of tries to construct human drama in the weight-lifting rooms and on the racquet-ball courts and comes up with a pale, hokey, pumped-up story that isn't even melodrama. "The jumps and kicks and sensuous contortions performed are the new dances," he writes at the top. "The exercise instructors who play records to keep these dances throbbing are the new disc jockeys. Coed health clubs, the new singles' bars of the Eighties, have usurped the sounds and the energies of the discotheques.

"They have also usurped the discotheques raison d'etre. They have become part of the mating ritual. They are the new places where couples meet for one night or for many nights. They are spawning everything from lustful matinees to matrimony." Clearly this means the health clubs offer fertile ground for a remake of the Urban Cowboy John Travolta as the shy guy who pumps iron and Debra Winger as the lusty lady of the Nautilus machines. Any reader who survives the opening has to be ready for the well-rounded quotes including the heavy but unsupported "It's safer than looking for Mr.

Good-bar" and justifications from a sports marketing expert and John Naisbitt, author of "Megatrends," of his dying universe, acquires a' greater quest: the Dark Tower. "Suppose," he is told, "that all worlds, all universes, met in a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower. A stairway, perhaps, to the Godhead itself. Would you dare, gunslinger? Could it be that somewhere, above all of endless reality, there exists a Room?" "God has dared, Or is the room empty? Would you dare?" The gunslinger, the most unimaginative of his kind, decides to dare, to find out. Perhaps he can save his world from the cosmic lawnmower.

Along the way, in books that have not yet been written, the gunslinger acquires help from three persons drawn like tarot cards from our world. Somewhere in the 3,000 pages to come, he will reach the Dark Tower. The first stanza of this epic ends, "The gunslinger waited and dreamed his long dreams of the Dark Tower, to which he would some day come at dusk and approach, winding his horn, to do some unimaginable final battle." We have been speaking about Stephen King's "The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger." Seek it out. It is very good science fiction. It is my favorite.

Rolande." He wrote the first sentence as a senior in March 1970. His synopsis promises a minimum of 3,000 pages. The first stanza was published last year. "At the speed which the entire work has progressed so far," King writes in an afterward, "I would have to live approximately 300 years to complete the tale of the Tower." We can only hope he takes care of himself. This is a beautiful novel, as melodic and haunting and cloying as the Browning poem that inspired it.

It takes place in another universe on a world that seems the more bizarre because of its curious parallels to our own. This world is split, like all worlds, into an aristocracy of haves and a subservient class of have-nots. At the tip of the aristocracy rests the warrior class who call themselves "gunslingers." They wear wide-brimmed Stetson hats, vests and kerchiefs, and they carry six-shooters on their hips. The gunslingers are the only ones with firearms, and they practice a demanding ethical code like samurais. Roland is the last gunslinger, a survivor of a bloody revolt by the masses, the overthrow of the old world.

As a youth his peers saw him as a dull, unimaginative type, slow, plodding and tenacious. It is perhaps these qualities that allowed Roland to survive when the flashier gunslingers died. It is these qualities that Roland takes on his quest. The story opens: "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." Roland is the gunslinger. He does not know who the man in black is.

He does not know why he is chasing him. Their chase takes them through the desert, through demon-haunted mountains and to a final confrontation. During his chase, the gunslinger learns a few things about his world and his universe. He learns that his world is dying, drifting into twilight as though its batteries had expired. The people say, "The world has moved on." He also learns that the world, in fact, the universe, is nothing more than a molecule of a dying weed in a cosmic vacant lot.

Perhaps that vacant lot lies in our world. Perhaps someone in our world cut the grass. Perhaps that is why "the world has moved on." And Roland, the last gunslinger When relatives come to town but want to see Washington lar Grove, to see his senator or at least the office of same in one of the three Senate office buildings on Constitution Avenue. Or, find the representative in one of the three House office buildings on Independence Avenue. The Senate is on one side; the House on the other.

Your rich old uncle from Utopia Beach, can obtain a pass to the galleries of each chamber, spend 10 minutes or so and discover that most senators and representatives usually will be absent. For information regarding Senate and House visits, both offices and galleries, call your senator or representative (by name) at (202) 224-3121. Your next quest might be to a committee meeting to see your favorite congressman. Ask the courteous guards in the various House or Senate office buildings about the hearings that are scheduled that day. Now is the time for a tour through the Capitol.

Free guided tours of about 45 minutes begin in the lower level Crypt (again, don't hesitate to ask for directions). Also, your mother from Missoula, might want to spend 45 minutes walking around the Capitol, so just wander around and listen as the tour guides explain the historical significanceinsignificance of this building that, unfortunately, is sorely in need of repair. If the gawking in-law from Ipswich, is hungry, there are public, albeit crowded, cafeterias in the House and Senate office buildings. The food is tolerable, not much better but visitors don't rush to Washington in the humidity of July or August to test the oysters By Nick Yengich Evening Sun Staff SUMMERTIME begets visitors to Baltimore-the nephews from Midvale, Utah, the parents from Ether, N.C., or the grandmother from Des Moines who don't really want to catch the sites of Baltimore but instead yearn to explore that swamp on the Potomac. You know, the city with the edifice complex, the one populated with the self-important who mingle with the bureaucrats who really get the work done.

Thus, here is one man's quickie tour of Washington, with enough stops to boggle the mind of someone from downtowp Minot, N.D. There may even be a tip or two to save sweaty tour guides with tired feet from certain aggravations. Before leaving, call the office of your senator or representative (if you don't know who he or she is, the person who drains away your tax dollars, that is your problem). Once you find out the name, inquire about special tours of the White House. These tours are supposedly of the VIP variety and ibegin before the peasants enter.

The visitor sees a cou-ple of more rooms in that wedding cake building on "Pennsylvania Avenue. Visitors won't see Ronnie and Nancy but will glimpse Jackie's Rose Garden, rooms that are called Red and Green and Blue and etc. They'll see dining rooms where famous and not-so-famous dine with the president, selections of first-family china and even the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington that Dolly Madison If the public cafeterias are too crowded, there are Restaurants behind the Capitol that is, the side where the Supreme Court rules, where the Library of Congress collects seemingly everything that is printed. Try to eat in the less crowded, off-lunch hours. By now, it is time to taste the delights of the Smithsonian Institution.

Don't worry. Mom from Mud Lake, Idaho, couldn't see all of it in a week. Pick a building, any building. I'd start at the Museum -of American History, formerly the National Museum of History and Here you'll find everything from display cases showing models of the First Ladies and their inaugural gowns (the lighting is terrible) to a wonderful, huge locomotive, the original Star Spangled Banner that Francis Scott Key supposedly saw from the water off Fort McHenry (there is reason to question whether anyone could see that far on the night of bombs bursting in air) and many, many items or exhibits that cannot be mentioned. But there are other elements of the Smithsonian.

I guess the other stop should be the National Air and Space Museum. Take a gander at the Wright brothers' plane, John Glenn's rudimentary capsule, planes that set record after record, flew to places that people believed could not be reached. Clearly, I have not touched on all of Washington for amateur guides. There are other Smithsonian buildings, art galleries, the National Zoo, etc. In other words, Aunt Harriet from Applegate, can only see so much.

saved when the British were bent on torching the White House. Listen to the guides. They are good and are not unwilling to answer questions. Summer crowds, however, limit access. Visitors must, in the summer, pick up tickets at the Ellipse (essentially the park behind the White House, not the Pennsylvania Avenue side).

They are available on a first-come, first-served basis, are free and, most importantly, designate the hour of the tour. For additional information, call (202) 456-2200. Now comes a problem: You are at one end of the city that Pierre L'Enfant is credited with designing (there are disputes) and at the other end is the Capitol with its House and Senate wings. But in between is the Smithsonian Institution. Additionally, a side trip on 14th Street that should be made is to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

Take that niece from Santa Fe to see dollars turned out faster than those little guys gobble other little guys in arcade games. This tour, like most in Washington, is a freebie. It is now late morning and time to head for the Capitol, specifically to the office buildings to obtain vistor's passes to see the House or Senate in action (or non-action) from the galleries. Catch a cab or bus or Washington's Metro up to The Hill. The capital letters are intended: Remember, the self-important populate Washington, and many places, people and things are described in upper case.

When you reach The Hill, take that cousin from Pop it-.