"I missed the applause." Who wouldn't, if you had one been El Cordobes, the Cordovan, Spain's foremost matador with a record of more than 2,000 bulls and an unforgettable style of frog jumps and other moves that brought the bulls--and the people--to their knees? In 1972, with no more whirls to conquer, El Cordobes, a.k.a. Manuel Benitez Perez, retired as a millionaire to a cattle and pig farm. But the quiet palled, and, after testing the ring and his reflexes in a benefit performance last year, El Cordobes decided to retire from retirement. Last week's fight at Benidorm, in which he was awarded five ears and a tail, will be followed by 60 more in Spain and Latin America; he may earn $4 million but, more important, he can relive those moments of truth.

On the face of it, there is a passing resemblance. The great stone visage is that of an Olmec god who had something to do with athletics. That fellow posing in front of it to promote his city of Veracruz had something to do with athletics too. As mayor, he is known to his constituents as Roberto Avila Gonzalez, 53. But a larger body of sports buffs remember him as Bobby Avila, who 20 years ago played second base for the Cleveland Indians when the Indians had more chiefs than they do these days. Avila in ten years with Cleveland appeared in three All-Star games and in 1954 won the American League batting championship with an average of .341. Take that, oldtimers.

Conquering cinemaspace is getting to be old hat for Christopher Reeve. Hanging his cape in the telephone booth temporarily between Superman and the upcoming Superman II, Reeve does it again as an ordinary playwright in a romantic saga called Somewhere in Time.

Vacationing at an old hostelry, played superbly in the film by the Grand Hotel on Michigan's famed Mackinac Island, the playwright falls for a 1912 portrait. Before you can say Clark Kent--poof--he goes back 67 years in time to see if he has the chance of a ghost with the subject, played by Jane Seymour.

Good as he is at time warps, the playwright is unfamiliar with straight razors. That explains the patches of tissue on Reeve's puss in the picture.

"She is a perfect baby," gushed Louise Brown's mother, as Louise--Lulu to her family--celebrated her birthday at a party in Bristol, England.

That's news? Well, yes, in a way, because Lulu really was a lulu: the world's first "test-tube baby," as the tabloids proclaimed her, who in a revolutionary procedure was conceived outside the womb. The flaxen-haired girl not only was pretty but also had begun to talk at ten months. Said Truck Driver Father Jon Brown: "We think she's going to grow up into a very pretty blond and a very intelligent one, too."

Put it down to lazy majeste, perhaps. Visiting a sheep farm in Argyll, Scotland, Britain's Prince Charles volunteered to shear a sheep with electric clippers as he had been taught as a schoolboy in Australia. As far as the Highland sheep was concerned, the Prince of Wales' approach was definitely non-ewe. It lunged between his legs and left him looking, well, sheepish. Worse, said Charles: "I was really worried about those horns. That sheep nearly ruined the dynasty!"

On the Record

Ralph G. Newman, president of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, protesting free-form benches placed around Grant's Tomb: "It's like having a roller-coaster ride running up and down the Lincoln Memorial."

Adlai Stevenson III, Illinois Senator: "Some people have an instinctive grasp of power. Winston Churchill didn't need zero-based budgeting."

Sir Nicholas Henderson, new British Ambassador to Washington, on changing customs: "Now, I see, the main sport is jogging. When I served here before, the main sport was baiting President Truman."

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