Cumberland Evening Times Cumberland, Maryland Monday, July 17, 1972 - Page 15
Tapping the Keg by J. Suter Kegg
THE BASEBALL ENCYCLOPEDIA is owned mostly by those who use it to look up an occasional record. The Jim Williams family of Clarysville keeps the huge book in their home only, it seems, to prove to others what it already knows. What one member of the family may not know about baseball history, another one does.
Star of the family diamond team is 14-year-old Alan who rattles off dates as well as facts and figures and little-known bits of information on players from the time baseball was first played. Occasionally, daddy Jim or brother David will take exception to a statement by Alan. It is then the huge encyclopedia, over 2,300 pages thick, is hauled out.
Like Bobby Fischer, the celebrated “chess nut,” Alan is in a class by himself when it comes to storing up all kinds of information in his brain. And daddy and David are by no means slouches in this department.
Scott, the youngest of the brothers, sticks his nose in the encyclopedia every once in a while although he prefers his baseball by participation. Scott, who will be nine next Sunday, is a Little League star.
David, while he loves baseball, prefers table tennis, following in his dad's footsteps in this respect. Dave, who will be a junior in September at the University of Maryland, thrives on competition and recently won over Bob Kominski, the 27th-ranked player in the country and the No. 4 man in Maryland.
All four male members of the Williams family are also chess players, with David being the star of the family. They all, by the way, are admirers of Fischer and pick him to beat Boris Spassky, the Russian champ, in the world chess finals now in process.
There's no way, say the chess-playing Williams thinkers, that Spassky can beat Fischer at his “own game.” David compares Fischer's achievement recently of winning 19 straight grand-master matches against the best players in the world with a pitcher hurling 19 consecutive no-hitters in baseball.
“There's nothing in chess history that comes close to matching that,” says daddy Jim.
The Williamses like two other things about genius Fischer. He plays tennis and table tennis for recreation, as do Jim and David.
Tapping the Keg 17 Jul 1972, Mon Cumberland Evening Times (Cumberland, Maryland) Newspapers.com
Tapping the Keg 17 Jul 1972, Mon Cumberland Evening Times (Cumberland, Maryland) Newspapers.com
