REFLECTIONS: Cultural Notes

A lot of quaint old American customs were turning up in Europe, bringing new romance and excitement to the increasingly prosaic continent. ¶At Rome's Stadio Nazionale. some 12,000 puzzled fans witnessed Europe's first international Pallabase (baseball) game. Urged by loudspeakers "not to be angry with any decisions made, because baseball is a highly technical game," they watched in awe and bewilderment as a team of Spanish all-stars trounced Italy's home club 7 to 3. High point of the game: Spanish Outfielder Antonio Casals' seventh-inning fuori di campo (home run). He was no Joe DiMaggio: his modest drive down the right-field line was called "fair" by the umpire, but Italy's rightfielder, disregarding the decision, decided on his own that the ball was foul and disdained to chase it.

¶ In Berlin, 9,000 jazz fans crowded into Berlin's Sportspalast for the annual German jitterbug championship, watched husky Helga Haier, 21, and her real cool partner Dieter Heidemann, 20, stomp, slide and swivel their way to first place in a style that, by comparison, made many a U.S. practitioner of the art look like a whirling dervish with lumbago. ¶In Paris, two great American institutions—the quiz program and the striptease—were ingeniously fused. Every night, in a nightclub called L'Academic des Vins, a model named Mile. Genevieve appears, tastefully clad, on the stage while a quizmaster flings questions at the audience. Each customer giving a correct answer is entitled to remove one piece of Mile. Genevieve's clothing. This continues until there are no more questions—and no need for them.