NEWTON'S LAW: SENSITIVITY TRAVELS TO DIXIE: JANE FONDA AT THE CHOP SHOP

Let me tell you about my experience with the tomahawk chop. It starts, as so many controversies do, with a gross misconception and Jane Fonda.

I was in Atlanta visiting friends this summer. The St. Louis Cardinals were also visiting, wrapping up a weekend series with the Braves. Fulton County Stadium is located beside Interstate 75, right on the way to my house, more or less. What did it matter if I got home a few hours late?

My mental conditioning betrayed me. The Braves played for years before a gathering of family and friends. The crowds were not big because the Braves consistently bumbled their way through a major league schedule. Superstation broadcasts showed me game after game of Atlanta fans disguised as empty seats.

Hence, it seemed a good opportunity to see the Cardinals from field level, rather than viewing the top side of every fly ball from nosebleed seats in Busch Stadium.

The second motive was less athletic in nature, unless you regard low-impact voyeurism as a spectator sport. Among the family and friends at Fulton County Stadium in recent times has been Jane Fonda, actress, aerobics tycoon and fiancee of Ted Turner, the Braves' owner.

I've never been much of a Jane Fonda fan, but I thought if I got good-enough seats (which seemed a real possibility), she and I could swap theories on cardio-vascular fitness. (I once saw Donald Sutherland at a Montreal Expos game but didn't have the chance to ask him why his psychotic movie roles seem so naturally acted.)

Timing is everything in this life. At the time of my visit, Atlanta fans were just discovering the possibilities for the Braves. That, or there were a lot of people like me wanting to get off the interstate for a while. The best seats I could get were in the upper deck. Go figure.

Equally disorienting was a curious crowd gesture meant to rally the home team, a karate-like arm motion purportedly resembling the thrust of invisible tomahawks.

It was a poor man's wave, but Atlantans, not accustomed to popular movements or winning baseball, seemed to embrace this modest expression.

Such is the delirium winning brings. The tomahawk chop became a symbol for the audacious Braves, a worst-to-first bunch that captured the National League crown and is playing this week in the World Series.

So there were Jane and Ted last week at the league championship series, sharing the Fulton County Stadium owner's box with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, a quartet of tomahawk choppers having fun at the old ballpark.

Anyone with a sense of drama should have looked at this pleasantly goofy scene and predicted trouble was brewing near the banks of the Chattahoochee River.

Native Americans are disenchanted with Atlanta's sense of propriety, not to mention that of Jane and Ted and Jimmy and Rosalynn. Indian rights groups have stepped forward to say the tomahawk chop is "absolutely shameful" and that native Americans are being subjected to stereotyping of the worst variety.

The argument is not entirely new, though it's been some time in taking shape. The Atlanta Braves team previously had homes in Milwaukee and Boston; the nickname has hung on since the turn of the century. The Cleveland Indians have also been around a while.

Stanford University, a cutting-edge institution when it comes to cultural sensitivity, once had sports teams called the Indians. In the ear~ly 1970s, the nickname was changed to the Cardinal ... the color, not the bird. Native American groups were pleased. Audubon groups also had nothing to gripe about.

My feeling is that Indian groups are justified in their distress over all the tomahawk chopping and headdress wearing. If the San Diego Padres had an inexplicable run of success and fans started wearing monk frocks and bellowing spiritual chants during games, I'm sure many of a religious bent would be offended.

Still, it is worth noting that Indian rights groups are hip enough now to recognize media opportunities when they stumble across them. They have gained a forum for criticizing the Braves and their fans because the team has finally finished high enough to get a piece of the national spotlight.

If Atlanta had played the inept brand of baseball most had expected, no one would be paying attention to this criticism. Success has been the catalyst for exhibiting this failure.

On a local basis, it provides little incentive for the Southeast Missouri State Indians to move ahead to athletic glory. Winning seasons will only be accompanied by charges of insensitivity.

Oh, yeah. Jane Fonda, now said to be contrite about the tomahawk chopping, never showed up that Sunday in Atlanta. I could tell even from my lousy seats. The Cardinals lost and I got back to Missouri late. This is what comes of watching cable television.