Who was that chatterbox in pinstripes prowling the third base coaching box at Yankee Stadium? Why, it was Little Orphan Billy Martin, back again as manager of baseball's world champions after a year's banishment. This time last season Yankee Owner George Steinbrenner decided that Martin was creating too much dissension among his big-name, high-salary players and replaced him with low-key Bob Lemon, who produced another championship. But last week, with the Yankees 7 1/2 games back of the Baltimore Orioles, Steinbrenner soured on Lemon. Back came brash Billy with all his old ego and temperament intact. Yankee fans, who like Lemon but always loved Billy the more, greeted the prodigal with cheers and applause seldom equaled since Ruth in his prime, which isn't bad for a so-so infielder with a lifetime batting average of .257.

It was Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus last week who seemed to be the endangered species, not the grumpy-looking chick that Andrus held in his hands or the proud big bird that dug its claws into the Secretary's shoulder as they posed together for photographers. The birds were peregrine falcons, and the news was that the Interior Department is going to shelter four of them at its Washington headquarters as a start toward bringing falcons back to the U.S. East Coast, where they were once numerous. That was heartening news for almost everyone except the capital's pigeons. When peregrines are not digging claws into Interior Secretaries, pigeons are what they love to eat.

Whatever it was that Old No. 48 was taught to block back in 1934 as the offensive-defensive center of the University of Michigan Wolverines, it certainly wasn't metaphors. Back on campus again last week to lay the cornerstone of his presidential library, Gerald Ford emphasized how difficult it had been to raise $8.4 million for the building, with second down and $1.4 million still to go. "Two years ago, we were literally back on our own goal line," said Ford, "and we had a long row to hoe. Now we are on the doorstep of success." The Ford library, when completed in two years, will contain 14 million documents, 700,000 ft. of film and 380,000 photographs. One of the documents: a copy of the proclamation Old 48 signed in 1974 granting presidential clemency to Whittier College No. 12, Richard Nixon.

Poor pulchritudinous Elizabeth Ray, 36, the only aspiring actress who was ever non-type-cast. Ray went into show biz after flopping as a non-typist for powerful Ohio Congressman Wayne Hays. Both Ray and Hays lost their jobs following revelations of their great and good friendship. Ray has tried since to make it in the theater. Last week she opened at Manhattan's Riverboat in a nightclub act that was, just possibly, worse than her typing.

But the choice of songs was insinuating--Big Spender, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Send in the Clowns--and her form as good as ever.

So determined is Iran's revolutionary government to wipe out Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi that $135,000 and a free trip to Mecca are now the bounty for anyone who will execute the Shah. Such vengeance naturally unnerves others who fear reprisals for dealing with the exiled royal family. Last week from London, Baron Enrico diPortanova, heir to a Texas oil fortune, filed a $100 million libel suit against ABC-TV for reporting that "despite denials, almost everyone in Acapulco believes the Shah will be moving" into a home diPortanova is building there next to the Shah's sister's villa. After that report, the baron and Wife Alesandra received warning from the new government. The diPortanovas, as a result, have holed up in Claridge's. Said the baron: "This is dangerous to my health."

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