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ROUNDTOWN -- The sports celebrities began filing into the Out Door Country Club at 10 a.m. Monday.
Some of them are still household names, decades after their retirement.
Others carry a much lower profile. They may not have been stars in their day, but their athletic skills still were a ticket to a pro contract.
The celebrities came to York to help raise money for a cause: Special Olympics. They got to play a round of golf and socialize with people from the community.
The Special Olympics Celebrity Golf Tournament is in its 24th year.
It began when a Yorker, George Tarasovic, ran the idea by a friend of his, Eddie Khayat.
Khayat, who like Tarasovic had a long career in the National Football League,
The two men then teamed up and began contacting former teammates and other athletes and coaches and inviting them to York in June.
"He (Khayat) lives in Nashville, and he's been coming all that way up here for this tournament," Tarasovic said. "When Eddie got a coaching job with the Baltimore Colts, I told him, 'don't buy a house in Baltimore until you see York.' So he bought a house here and later moved to Nashville."
Khayat plans to continue making the trip to York for the tournament.
"It's a great tournament," he said. "All the old ballplayers said it's a first-class operation. We have a lot of guys who have never missed one of these, and that goes the same for the sponsors and the foursomes."
Moseley finds life after football: Getting cut from a team is devastating to an athlete.
When the Houston Oilers cut Mark Moseley in 1972, he wondered if his dream of a pro football career had been dashed.
In retrospect, Moseley thinks it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to him.
"I was out of football for two years, and I realized just how hard it is to make a living out there," he said. "I made my mind up that if I did get back into football that I was going to devote my time in the offseason to finding something that I could fall back on when I did retire from football."
Moseley, as anyone who follows the NFL knows, got back in the game. The only kicker ever to win the league's Most Valuable Player award, Moseley is the Washington Redskins' all-time leading scorer. He retired in 1986 following one season with the Cleveland Browns.
"I probably could have played a couple more years, but I felt like I didn't want to drag my family all over the country," he said. "I said, 'let's call it quits. I had a good career and I won a Super Bowl ring.'"
Life after football has worked out for Moseley, too. He's director of franchise development for Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Before joining Five Guys, Moseley owned a travel business, which he sold in the late 1990s.
"We have a little over 1,000 stores around the country (including two in York)," he said. "I had a hamburger place of my own in Virginia, and one of the sons (from the Five Guys ownership family) came into my store and I started talking to him about getting into franchising with them."
Moseley is also president of the Redskins' alumni group. He's concerned about the long-term effects on players from all the hits they've taken over the years.
"We're finding out about head trauma and what it can lead to: dementia and Alzheimer's," he said. "What kind of upset the players is that the owners have known about this for a long time. Now hopefully, we can get it out there and address it. They're going to have to find a way to make the game safer."
I-95 rivalry starting be tween Orioles, Nats: An I-95 baseball rivalry featuring Baltimore and Washington may blossom after all.
The teams were never rivals when they were both in the American League. When the Orioles had outstanding teams in the 1960s, the Senators weren't very good. Washington's franchise folded following the 1971 season, and the team moved to Texas.
Baseball returned to the nation's capital in 2005 when the Nationals joined the National League East.
The Nationals entered 2012 looking for their first winning season, and the Orioles dragged a 14-year losing streak into this season. Down, though, has turned into up for both franchises this season. Both teams began play on Monday 12 games above .500. The Nationals were leading their division, and the Orioles were second to the Yankees. The teams are scheduled for a three-game inter-league series beginning Friday at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
"Finally, the rivalry that I think everyone was hoping for, finally has happened," said Nationals' TV analyst and former Major League standout Ray Knight. "The Orioles have a great young ballclub. Their pitching has been exceptional, and they have some pretty good stars, led by Adam Jones."
Knight said both teams have followed similar paths.
"Two teams that just couldn't play solid baseball -- Buck (Showalter) goes in there (to Baltimore) and straightens things out, and Davey Johnson comes to the Nationals, and all of a sudden, things start clicking," he said.
Orioles' broadcaster, and ex-player, Dave Johnson thinks a rivalry would be great for the mid-Atlantic area.
"There are so many people down in the D.C. area who haven't latched on to the Nationals because they were Orioles' fans," he said. "If the Nationals continue to play well, they may say, 'you know, it's time to go ahead and switch over to the Nationals.'"
Former Oriole Joe Orsulak thinks the current team can shed the losing streak.
"Barring injures to starting pitchers or Jim Johnson (the team's closer), there's no reason they can't keep it up for the rest of the season," he said. "They have a great bullpen, and they're not blowing games like they have in the past. If you blow 10 to 15 games a season, that's the difference between being a really good team and a really bad team."
Orsulak, an O's radio analyst, sees a similarity between this team and the "Why Not" Orioles' club he played on in 1989. That team, coming off a horrendous 1988 campaign, stayed in the pennant hunt until the final weekend.
"We had a great bullpen there," he said. "We had a closer, Gregg Olson, who came up and was a surprise. Mark Williamson did a nice job (along with Kevin Hickey). Plus, we had two starters (Jeff Ballard and Bob Milacki) who won 14 to 18 games."
Orsulak said winning has instilled confidence in the 2012 team, the same way it did in 1989.
"Once the season got underway, we started to have confidence in our pitchers, and the pitchers started to have confidence in our defense," he said. "Everyone became confident of the other guy, and you knew that you didn't have to do it yourself."
The current team, Orsulak said, has changed atmosphere at Oriole Park.
"I can see the excitement coming back with the fans," he said.
Ressler reflects on Penn State: Glenn Ressler hasn't had a chance to meet Penn State's new head football coach, Bill O'Brien, but the reports he's received indicate that O'Brien is doing a "wonderful job."
"He has a good coaching staff in place, and he seems to be recruiting well," said Ressler, a star lineman at Penn State who went on to play in the NFL with the Baltimore Colts.
Ressler, who won the Maxwell Award as the best college football player in the country during his senior season (1964), doesn't get to a lot of Penn State games.
"Usually one game a year, but I enjoy watching them on TV," he said.
When Ressler played at Penn State, the late Joe Paterno was an assistant coach.
"It's so unfortunate the way it happened with Joe (Paterno, who was fired in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal)," Ressler said. "He did so much for the university."
Tournament winners: The foursome of Jeff Grove, Dick Lee, Bob Sanders and Kevin Dietz, teamed with celebrities Stan Hixon and Keith Urgo for the low score of the day, a 59.
Jeff Gingerich, Jim Krall, Tom Gingerich and Lou Gingerich, along with celebrities Tony Covington and Carlton Kammerer, were second with a 60.
-- Reach Dick VanO linda at dvanolin da@yorkdispatch.com or 505-5407.
