The stance is early Abner Doubleday; the batsman is Captain Fantastic himself, Rock Star Elton John. All dandied up in a sequined white Dodger uniform (designed by Cher's own dressmaker, Bob Mackie), Elton had come to play a pair of concerts at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. In real life, of course, Elton has never swung a baseball bat in anger. "What I have played is a game called rounders," said the bespectacled singer. "It's the English equivalent of baseball and not nearly as violent. None of that sliding into bases and trying to get the guy with your cleats." With 110,000 tickets sold to his rock doubleheader, Elton seemed more concerned with his sequins than his slide anyway. His uniform's cost? "Two thousand," said Elton. "But that's just a ballpark figure."

It was a very bad deal indeed, at least in the opinion of Thomas Austin Preston Jr., a.k.a. Amorillo Slim, 46. Preston, who parlayed his 1972 victory in Las Vegas' World Series of Poker into a tour of TV talk shows and a movie role in California Split, was arrested by his home-town police in Amarillo, Texas, last week. Charged with felonious bookmaking on football games, the lanky, slow-talking gambler drew a short stay in Potter County jail before his release on $25,000 bail. "I was at the wrong place at the wrong time," complained Preston later, adding that he would surely win his case when all the cards were down.

With his competitors multiplying like rabbits, Playboy Emperor Hugh Hefner, 49, has recruited help for his troubled hutch. Starting Nov. 1, his new "special assistant" will be Christie Hefner, 22, Hefs own willowy brunette daughter. "I'll be listening and learning about the entire corporation and placing problems in front of my father that need his attention," says Christie, who has been following her father's "Playboy Philosophy" since she was 18 and began rooming with a college boy friend. Alas, she will apparently disappoint feminist critics of the bare-skin magazine. "My presence speaks for itself," she asserts loftily, "and belies the chauvinist claims against Playboy."

"I hope I'll still be sexy," fretted German-born Actress Elke Sommer, who faces her 34th birthday next week and an upcoming stage role as an older woman in Cactus Flower. Male viewers of Sommer's newest movie, The Net, will probably see little cause for her concern. Cast as a kittenish prostitute on the run from a maniacal killer, Elke displays her talents in one scene through an all-leather outfit she bought in Chicago. "I loved it and wanted to wear it barefoot during the filming in Rome," she recalled. Not so Director Manfred Purzer, who quickly ordered his star to buy a pair of snakeskin boots. However, the footwear footage ended up on the cutting-room floor, and the $700 Italian boots were consigned to a far corner of Elke's closet.

"I think people were a little confused. They don't think symphonies should be funny," said Painter, Composer and Author (Clockwork Orange) Anthony Burgess after hearing his Symphony C performed for a bewildered but appreciative audience at the University of Iowa. The avant-garde composition began "as an English dance rhapsody and developed into a symphony more or less against my will," explained Burgess. Its finale is "corny, full of schmalz, with a mandolin tinkling away in the background," and at the end "the orchestra plays a single fortissimo chord of C major and everybody goes off for a drink." The music's mystery may be rooted in its unusual creation. Burgess, 58, wrote at least half of his symphony while on a lecture tour of the U.S. earlier this year. "The score was sent to [Conductor] James Dixon from Oshkosh, Wis., without my having checked a note of it aurally," he confessed. "Holiday Inns have Muzak but no pianos."

She became one of the highest-paid models of the 1960s with an 84-lb. body and measurements of 32-22-32. Now weightier by a scant 7 Ibs. Twiggy, 26, arrived at London's Ritz Hotel last week to plug her new autobiography and announce that she is branching out into matrimony. Her intended: American Actor Michael Whitney, 42. "She isn't much of a cook, but she makes a fabulous egg-and-chips and spaghetti sauce," says Whitney of his fiancee, whom he met more than two years ago. Though her modeling and acting careers have faded, the future bride still plans to make an album of love songs before easing into the role of housewife. "I believe that a girl has to be the homey sort to keep her man," says Twigs, who intends to dish up the eggs-and-chips in Rome, where Whitney will soon be making a movie. "He is a bit of a gypsy," she allows. "I would never let him be there by himself with all those fabulous Italian birds."

He is still No. 1 with the jete set, but at 37, Ballet Star Rudolf Nureyev may be feeling a bit creaky of knee. Friends report that he has considered an acting career, and the aging dancer has been showing up at a London studio to cut his first record. Nureyev, who defected from the Soviet Union in 1961, read the title role of Stravinsky's L 'Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier's Tale) in lightly accented English. He then described his trepidation at leaving his silent art even temporarily. "I usually don't have the courage," confessed Nureyev, "but I arrange things so that I can't escape." Nervous or not, he apparently intends to keep at it. Next spring he will team up with French Mime Marcel Marceau, who will play the devil, and make a film of L 'Histoire.

Marlene Dietrich rejuvenated? No, the net stockings and tux belong to Swiss-born Actress Marthe Keller, 29, whose comedy role in Le Guepier (The Hornet's Nest) casts her as an entertainer who has Dietrich's looks but none of her talent. With almost a dozen European films to her credit, Keller has now begun her first American movie, Marathon Man, starring Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier. How do her new co-stars compare with the likes of Italy's Marcello Mastroianni and France's Yves Montand"? "It's a question of geography, of one's country," answers Keller. "Marcello is always thinking of eating. He's sensual. Montand is professional in the French way and very charming. Dustin is profound, passionate and funny."

"We eloped and there was no honeymoon. She's always been sad that there wasn't a white wedding," observed Roger Smith, former sleuth on TV's 77 Sunset Strip and the husband-manager of Actress Ann-Margret for the past eight years. So, in an upcoming television special titled Ann-Margret Smith, the pair will say their vows once more, this time with the groom in top hat and gray cutaway and the bride in white. That done, they will cycle into the sunset, tin cans trailing behind their Harley-Davidson. "Weddings are more fun the second time around, especially with the same man," claimed the again bride-to-be. Said Smith: "Maybe that's something Liz Taylor would understand."

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