White Shoes

Eleven-year-old Vinny Dolce (with the white shoes) and his brother Joey, 12, doubled up on a swing at Columbus Park when the weather turned warm yesterday. Forecasters say a brief shower is possible today. Otherwise, expect rain-free skies and a high of 72 in the Philadelphia area. Tomorrow should also be fine swinging weather, but thunderstorms are possible beginning Monday.

Surveying Paul Fussell's elegantly crammed Walnut Street apartment, one suspects how and why Philadelphia's great scholar-curmudgeon ended up knocking out his droll new study, Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear (Houghton Mifflin, $22). Late at night, while wife and fellow writer Harriet Behringer sleeps, the 78-year-old author of The Great War and Modern Memory - named by Modern Library as one of the 20th-century's top nonfiction books - undoubtedly wanders amid his rooms of war and travel bric-a-brac in full regalia of one sort or another.

Blue caps. Red caps. Blue blouses. Green blouses. Navy blue blouses. Royal blue blouses. Baby blue blouses. Teal blue blouses. Even turquoise blouses. Is that any way for major league baseball players to dress? Of course not. Yet it's the way far too many are uniformed this season. You know, like those guys who get together on weekends to play a little softball and drink a lot of beer. The Phillies, some of whom look like weekend softball players, had their little flap over wearing blue caps.

It must have been the shoes. For the annual Thanksgiving Day game against Downingtown, the Coatesville Red Raiders' defense wore white shoes, and the offense wore its regular black shoes. It wasn't a fashion statement or psychological ploy - it was just an attempt for better traction. "We knew the field was muddy and slippery," linebacker Terrell Bryant said of the field at Downingtown. "And after we slipped and slided all over the place against Cumberland Valley (in a 28-19 loss)

Don't mess with Beverly Sutphin. We say this not because the Baltimore homemaker is a neatnik whose cheery tract home has never seen a dust speck. We say this because the wholesome, neatly coiffed wife and mother of two is a pen pal of notorious nurse-killer Richard Speck. It is the strained conceit of John Waters' black comedy Serial Mom that inside the crisp shirtwaist of the suburban housewife thumps the heart of a mass murderer. Starring Kathleen Turner as Beverly Sutphin, mother of all mothers, Waters' film means to be a goof on the popular image of the apple-pie mom - meaning that Waters, director of Polyester and Hairspray, finds humor rather than horror in the worm squirming through that pie. Serial Mom is a one-joke affair and that joke is perversity.

As was evident on Thursday's opening day of the AT&T National at Aronimink, golf and fashion sense, much like bowling and sobriety, are mutually exclusive terms. Given that their clothing tastes tend to range from garish to ghastly, it's always been difficult to know whether golfers are way ahead of the fashion curve or they wiped out on the first turn back in 1966. Anyway, after a day at Aronimink, one fashion trend was in clear focus: white belts. Are they in again?

Mike Schmidt has described it countless times, the influence Pete Rose had on his career. "I've described it a billion times," Schmidt said, pressed one more time in the stampede of 1980 reminiscences. "He was a positive influence on my baseball career from the day I first met him. "He always had something to say to me that made me feel good. One year, we were wearing white shoes, in '75, I think. "I was playing pepper with Larry Bowa and a couple of other guys, behind the batting cage.

When Soviet doctor Yuri Valentik comes to Philadelphia, he shops at Funk O Mart. So does physician Marina Tarinova. So do dozens of Soviets. And why not? After all, it is "Philadelphia's Underground of Sound. " What better place for Russian doctors to buy Korean-made boomboxes? Four busloads of Soviets hustled through the streets of Center City yesterday, spending dollars with an enthusiasm worthy of the most ardent American shopper. It could have been a game show.

John Yank is sitting alongside Joe Zaborowski on the dock at the Ocean City Marina, telling stories about the man who lived large enough here to become a legend. "Always in white," he is saying. "White shirt. White shoes. He kept a half-dozen pairs of those white shoes at his place, and if he got even the slightest scuff he would change to a new pair. "I was 8 or 9 years old then. He put me to work scraping the bilge on his boat, paid me 50 cents an hour. He reminded me of Popeye.

Retire after 50 years in the flower business? No, thanks. Cut back to a five-day work week? Forget it. "As long as I can keep going, I'll keep going," said Catherine Walrath, dressed in spotless white pants, white shoes and a white-flowered blouse as she bustled about her shop here last week. That sums up her approach not just to running a business for 50 years, but also to each day. It has guided her small corner store, Talarico's Flowers, and been the pillar on which Walrath, widowed 40 years ago with five children to rear, always has relied.

As was evident on Thursday's opening day of the AT&T National at Aronimink, golf and fashion sense, much like bowling and sobriety, are mutually exclusive terms. Given that their clothing tastes tend to range from garish to ghastly, it's always been difficult to know whether golfers are way ahead of the fashion curve or they wiped out on the first turn back in 1966. Anyway, after a day at Aronimink, one fashion trend was in clear focus: white belts. Are they in again?

My most enduring memory of my mother, Lee Kennedy, is of her standing at the kitchen sink, washing dishes, looking out the window that faced our backyard, and singing to herself. There were five of us kids, so she was washing dishes constantly. Sometimes I'd catch her looking off into the distant woods, and I fancied her picturing herself on a stage somewhere, singing to a grand audience. She'd given up her career in musical theater for marriage and family, and I think this was the only way she felt she could have a connection to the life she left behind.

Surveying Paul Fussell's elegantly crammed Walnut Street apartment, one suspects how and why Philadelphia's great scholar-curmudgeon ended up knocking out his droll new study, Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear (Houghton Mifflin, $22). Late at night, while wife and fellow writer Harriet Behringer sleeps, the 78-year-old author of The Great War and Modern Memory - named by Modern Library as one of the 20th-century's top nonfiction books - undoubtedly wanders amid his rooms of war and travel bric-a-brac in full regalia of one sort or another.

Back in September, I wrote about Widener's Billy "White Shoes" Johnson, who had been honored by the College Football Hall of Fame for his accomplishments at the NCAA Division III school. I was public relations director at Widener during Johnson's career, and I mentioned several of his more remarkable games, including one against Franklin & Marshall College in which he gained 151 yards and scored two touchdowns - on his first three touches of the game! Well, that comment struck a nerve with J. Ward Larkin, F & M Class of '76. Larkin wrote to my editor, saying that I "failed to mention that Billy's club lost the game and . . . [Billy]

A few careers ago, I had the privilege of serving as public relations director at Widener College during the explosive career of Billy "White Shoes" Johnson. I saw the running back score most - if not all - of his 62 career Widener touchdowns, and I got to know this personable young man extremely well. So, it came as no surprise to me when Johnson, always a Hall of Fame human being, became an official Hall of Famer recently when he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind. I remember what a pleasure Johnson was to work with and how he stopped in my office to thank me for helping him get named to the small college All-America team.

Retire after 50 years in the flower business? No, thanks. Cut back to a five-day work week? Forget it. "As long as I can keep going, I'll keep going," said Catherine Walrath, dressed in spotless white pants, white shoes and a white-flowered blouse as she bustled about her shop here last week. That sums up her approach not just to running a business for 50 years, but also to each day. It has guided her small corner store, Talarico's Flowers, and been the pillar on which Walrath, widowed 40 years ago with five children to rear, always has relied.

Terry Bradshaw, Walter Payton, Wilbert Montgomery and Widener's Billy "White Shoes" Johnson were among the first group of players from the NCAA's Division I-AA, II and III and the NAIA named to the College Football Hall of Fame yesterday. Bradshaw, who won four Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers, passed for 6,568 yards from 1966 to 1969 for Louisiana Tech. Payton, the NFL's all-time rushing leader with 16,726 yards in 13 seasons with the Chicago Bears, played for Jackson State from 1971 to 1974.

Who said that you can't go home again? Looking as fit and trim as he did when he was a three-time Pro Bowl selection and adjudged by many as the greatest punt returner in NFL history, William Arthur Johnson, better known as Billy "White Shoes" Johnson, proved that old saying to be untrue. Johnson, who played 14 seasons in the NFL and one season in the CFL, returned to his roots Saturday, again wearing his trademark white shoes, when his former Chichester No. 11 jersey was retired in a pregame ceremony before Chichester's football game against Penn Charter at Anthony Apichella Memorial Field.

You could watch seven former Wimbledon champions play first-round matches at the All England Club yesterday. Among them, Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf, Boris Becker, Pat Cash, Michael Stich, Stefan Edberg and Conchita Martinez have won 14 singles titles. Two lost. Pat Cash, the flamboyant Australian who won here in 1987, came out for his match against Dick Norman of Belgium with his wrists and elbows and ankles wrapped in gauze and sponge and tape. Shortly after he lost the first set in a tiebreaker, Cash defaulted, injured somewhere.

When Billy Johnson, the most prolific punt returner in NFL history, touched a football and began to churn those trademark white cleats, it was enough to make both fans and foes hold their breath. For the odds were good that the trip, as mesmerizing as it was circuitous, would take the sprite-size speedster and his panting pursuers to the end zone. The show didn't stop there, either. The former Widener University star, just 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, sealed nearly every score with a signature dance of flapping knees and wriggling hips that set a trend in goal-line celebrations.