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By BOB EHLERT

~ ...... Staff Wrtter George A. Pl!mpton, the great impostor, keeps on surviving his Walter Mitty {anlllsies. Maybe it's be­ cause he's reaJiy three men. He's the George Plimpton who wears boxer shorts (under his conservative slacks and sportcoat of course) while flagging down $2,000 speaking engage­ ments at places I!ke Old Dominion University, where he was Wednesday for the ODU Uterary Festival. He's the handsome, lanky, gray-haired Plimpton who survived a "prickly" interview with Ernest Hem· ingway in a rowboat so many years ago. And yes, he'S George Plimpton the paper lion, pa­ tron saint 01 participatory journalism. When he's not pitching to Willie Mays or substituting for John Havli­ cek on the Boston Celties, he's a contributing editor and writer with Sports Illustrated, Harpers, and Food and Wine. Boxer shorts? The unmistakable bulging white elastic band appeared when Plimpton shed his pink shirt and tie to don an ODU basketbal! jersey. His eyes matched the blue ODU lettering perfectly. On Hemingway, Plimpton said you could ask the man anything about anything except writing. "I always wondered about the white bird that ap­ peared in so many love-making passages in his books. The two of us were out In a boat. It seemed like a good time to ask him. "As SOOn as I did, he started to wrestle with me. I think he was trying to throw me out of the boat," said Plimpton, 53-year-old editor and co-founder of the Ut,. erary journal Paris Review. George Plimpton, Harvard '50, told his old stories about how he got to be a signal caller with the Detroit Uons while working for Sports Illustrated. "It really began back at Harvard when I had to run In the Boston Marathon to fulfil! a hazing require­ ment. They didn't say I bad to run the entire route, so I hid in the bushes a few hundred feet short of the fin­ ish line." As the leader, a Korean, ran by beaded for the finish line, Plimpton jumped from the bushes and sprinted the final steps of the race. "I found out later that the Korean nearly killed himself sprinting the final leg after running all that way. "When he found out the prank I'd pulled (after an interpreter explained), he tried to raise his arms and Swing but he was just too tired," Plimpton said. That was Plimpton's first IlIste of playing the im­ postor. Later in his writing career, Plimpton COD­ vinced Sports Illustrated editors that participating in the sports he wrote about would make the stories all the more interesting. "It's the oldest trick In the game, but it works," he said. It led to the day Plimpton played quarterback for the Detroit Uons in an intrasquad exhibition scrim­ mage at Pontiac, Mich. "I lost 36 yards in four plays," Plimpton chuckled. His ODU audience of 500 loved hearing the old war stories. There have been dozens of otber real-life encoun­ ters with tbe sporting world. George Plimpton juggles the lives of editor, speaker, and (See PLIMPTON, Page B2) great Impostor_ He's in town for the ODU Literary Festlval_ PLIMPTON------~---- Continued' from Page Bl of the car. It was so unexpected, no one even Somehow he manages to juggle his three talked about for the next three floors." lives quite well. He spends his mornings He pitched to Will ie Mays. He boxed The bout never came off. Ken Norton working on the Paris Review. There are three rounds with fotmer light-heavyweight broke Ali's jaw in another fight and that was speaking engagements to attend to, and boxing champ Archie Moore. that. ideas for more participatory journalism "He graciously accepted my invitation, Plimpton's antics go on and on, touching pieces. and then a friend of mine proceeded to tell every sport except roller derby and pro It's hard for him to pick his favorite Archie that I WaS really a strapping college wresting. pastime. boxer with his eye on taking the title by "I juat can't imagine Haystack Calhoun surprise. coming down on top of me," he said. "If I had to, give up the Review, it woiiid kill me. It's never been a real financial suc­ "My friend, I say that, gingerly, told him The New Yorker said he has no favorite cess. But it's got to survive. It's the only the whole thing was a setup, that 1 had invit­ experif!nce. uThey were all nightmares." place left where certain pieces of poetry and ed all the press and everything." One, h~wever. stands out. fictiqn couid ever be published. We don't ex­ Moore was none too amused. "If he Re switched from sports for a season to aclly tater to what the public wants," he touches me, just once . . ." he wamOd. "perform" with Leonard Bernstein and or. said. BBC asked Plimpton to go a few rounds chestra on a Canadian tour. He was sent to the magazine, which began in Paris in with Muhammad Ali prior to a broadcast of the petcussionsection. 1953, is published quarterly from Flushing, the Kentucky Derby. "The worst thing to make a mistake in is N.Y. "Ali accepted. You really don't know the m\1Sic~you can wreck a whole symphony, I As for the Walter Mitty side of Plimpton, psychological warfare that went on with that managed to do that. In sports, everyone be bas some ideas. man. makes mistakes. But in moslc, it's dread­ "One night he called me at 2 a.m. to say ful," he said. "1 think maybe performing with a rock 'You won't even make it through the ring in~ Plimpton i. not purely enamored of group would be exciting. 1 know the leader of structions,'" Plimpton said. Another time, sports figures and celebrities. The people he the band Kiss. . . . I had the opportunity of Ali was waiting 'outside an elevator with his likes most to portray are tbose who "are will­ trying on his platform shoes. shirt off and muscles flexed while Plimpton ing to talte risks in life, those people who are "I'm already 6-foot-4. Those things made \Vas on his way up to another floor. willing to stand up for what they believe in. me feel like I was seven feet tall. "Needless to say, the door opened and "You don't see that much anymore," he ';'It was a tremendous sense of exhilara. everybody on ,board sank back to the rear said. tion."