Play Ball

Symbolic of the man himself, the era of George Steinbrenner in the United States Olympic Committee came on here Sunday like a runaway freight train. The USOC House of Delegates' annual meeting this weekend was expected to be a Steinbrenner dog and pony show that would, after a year of review, pass legislation recommended by Steinbrenner's Overview Commission and geared to "streamline the organization" and make it more businesslike. Which is exactly what happened.

I read where Diane Sawyer signed a $6-million-a-year contract. Is she a catcher, pitcher, infielder or outfielder? PEGGY MORSE Harbor City

"We'll just wait for the owners to come to their senses." So spoke Kirk Gibson. That has to rank with with epitome in skateboard mentality. If these youngsters, whose sole contribution to the betterment of society is playing kids' games, want part of the profit, then let them put their own money at risk as the owners did. Then they can point to themselves as true producers. In the interim, go out and play, and be thankful. VERNON M. LATSHAW, Laughlin, Nevada

The Angels are trying to sign center fielder Chad Curtis to a three-year contract. Curtis, who had stolen 91 bases in his first two major league seasons, is hoping to reach an agreement by Thursday that will give him in excess of $5 million. "It's nice to be appreciated," Curtis said Friday at Tempe, Ariz., "but I would like to get this whole business over with and just play ball." Curtis would be sacrificing two years of arbitration eligibility by signing the contract.

When Rene Diaz, 11, told his big brother that he and his friends wanted to play baseball, Fernando Diaz knew they would need some special help. Rene and his friends are deaf, and while they took immediately to the game, they were afraid to join the teams they saw playing in a neighborhood park. They knew they could not talk to the other children, and the coaches could not talk to them. But Fernando Diaz could. So he decided to coach the children himself. Today, Rene and his friends make up most of a team in the park league at Yosemite Recreation Center in Eagle Rock.

Almost unnoticed amid the distractions of war, baseball spring training has begun and already a salary record has been set. Boston Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens became the highest-paid player in baseball history with a $21.5-million, four-year contract. That's $5.4 million a year--"or $1,000 a pitch based on the number of pitches he threw last season," notes a banker dryly.

They say someone needs to save baseball. I say call Dennis Eckersley. They say this is no time to be glib, that the situation is urgent, that the Grand Old Game is drowning beneath the murky waves of player self-absorption, owner lunk-headedness, major-network indifference, agent interference and, not too surprisingly, growing fan disgust.

It may not rank with the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn, but there is important news on the baseball front this winter. Barring last-minute complications, the minor league professional baseball team known as the Riptide is about to move from Long Beach to Mission Viejo. This is not just any team, mind you. This is a club that while playing in Long Beach the past two years had a team dentist (that's how he advertised on the outfield wall) and boasted the Queen Mary as the "official" team hotel.

For the first time in the 127-year history of professional baseball, the season starts in March when the Seattle Mariners and Chicago White Sox play tonight in the Kingdome. In order to avoid having the World Series stretch to Nov. 3 for a possible seventh game, baseball officials moved up the start of the season a week. Randy Johnson, who won last year's AL Cy Young Award after going 18-2, starts for the Mariners against Alex Fernandez, who was 12-8 for the White Sox.

Baking in the California desert 220 miles northeast of Los Angeles and at the foot of Mt. Whitney sits what used to be a ballpark--one that wouldn't even qualify for the minor leagues today but whose very presence is just as elemental to U.S. history as Ebbets Field. The dirt diamond--its baselines still visible beneath 57 years' worth of sagebrush--rests squarely along Highway 395 on the eastern border of what was once euphemistically called the Manzanar War Relocation Center.