14 - Friday, February 8, 1985

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

;N:ONI. 11.

BY LARRY PALADINO

Special to The Jewish News

If Morrie Moorawnick didn't
exist, the best fiction writers in the
land would be hard pressed to fabri-
cate him.
Is he live, or is he Memorex?
Answer this: Can anyone accu-
rately score three baseball games at
the same time? Can anyone phone in
the same sports results to five different
news sources without duplicating the
narration? Can anyone score one event
efficiently, while monitoring another
— or more than one other — on a
radio? Can anyone live well in his own
home, attend just about every major
sports event in Michigan, and take a
yearly two-week trip down south while
earning no more than $6,000 a year?
Illogical? Impossible? Implausi-
ble?
Maybe, But Moorawnick handles
all with aplomb.
He is the first to admit that there
may never be anyone else quite like
him in the area — or the country —
when it comes time to hand up his

,

In photo above,
statistician Morris
Moorawnick follows
the action at a recent
Pistons game with
announcer Gary
May, center, and
scorer Mike Brenner,
left.
At right, Morris'
handiwork.

(score) pads. Actually, there may be no
need to replace Moorawnick, the Babe
Ruth of sports statisticians. He has no
intentions of retiring, or even of dying,
for that matter.
In fact, Moorawnick (pronounced
more-OV-nick) figures his lifelong oc-
cupation is a continual vacation, a re-
tirement in which the only pension
checks are when he checks to make
sure his' numbers add up and prove
out.
As for dying, the 57-year-old
Moorawnick says, `. . .that never will
happen because I plan on living
forever. When I'm 70 or 80 they'll find
a way to perpetuate life to 125 or 130.
When I'm 125 or 130 they'll find a way
to perpetuate life to 200," and so on
and so on.
Superhuman feats tend toward
exaggeration and so Moorawnick
quickly debunks one persistent report.
No, he never has scored four baseball
games at the same time.
"I don't know a field around here

where I could possibly watch four
games at the same time," he says. "But
I have done three games."
Moorawnick, a Detroiter and
Wayne State graduate whose
storekeeping accomplishments earned
him a spot in the Michigan Amateur
Sports Hall of Fame, says he began
scoring baseball games in the late '40s
while regularly going to watch
sandlotters.
"Clare Whelpley was a Philadel-
phia Phillies scout and secretary of the
Detroit Baseball Scorekeepers Asso-
ciation and he saw me scoring a game,"
Moorawnick explains. "He said so long
as I liked to to it, how about doing it
officially? So I joined the association
and scored for them for 21 years. It
folded, but I still score games .. .
"Our association had such a vol-
ume of games that it couldn't handle
them /all. I used to be given back-to-
back games — I'd score two at once.
One week, the secretary said I'd be at a
field with three games and not enough

