THERE WERE THIRTY HAMS in this particular sandwich in between performances by young New England skaters, skate pairs, and soloists Janet Lynn and John Misha Petkevinch, the audience at last Friday's An Evening with Champions had the pleasure of seeing 13 Harvard notables break the ice.

Alan Heimert had deliberated all afternoon as to whether he would wear his Moby Dick or his Ahab costume. Derek Bok resolved the crisis by calling in sick--saying that his Achilles' heel was acting up. But Bok made Heimert an offer he couldn't refuse.

So Heimert donned his peg leg, whistled to his trusty Moby the Zamboni, filled his saddle bags with beer and answered his Don's call with the cry. "Next to liberty, the brotherhood most dear."

Moby got heated up over the sight of Petkevich: Petkevich was very insulted and protested. "Ish male. Call me Ish male." Heimert poured water on Moby's heated Websterian brow. The water splashed on the ice, and Petkevich complained that pouring water on the ice only made the ice colder. And it was too cool already. In the end, Heimert had such difficulty getting his overeager Moby Zamboni out of the rink that he had to back him out.

"How does a Boston Brahmin take so well to being a ham?" a reporter inquired of Robert Grovesner Gardner. "Simple," he replied. "Some go ham. We go proscuito." As he skated off he was heard to mutter. "Ten pig wedding, five pig funeral, with five pounds of bacon cleared." Then this little proscuito went wee, wee, wee all the way home.

Looking more and more like a cross between Huckleberry Finn and Oliver Barrett III. Hooks Burr made himself right at home on the slippery stuff, having been a prep school hockey star in his day. Barbara Cohn, lecturer on Visual and Environmental Studies, leapt into Petkevich's arms as Helen Homans Gilbert, first woman overseer of the University, did a leg extend down on the ice and held her position--like a catatonic Cossack.

ROGER FISHER PROFESSOR OF LAW advocated that his International Conflict for Beginners be revised to include International Conflict fot Beginners on Ice, when Richard Pipes. Director of the Russian Research Center, announced that Harvard was going to put out a Slavic daily called Veri Tass. On rethinking the situation entirely. Roger Fisher decided to call the book War and Peace.

Alvin Pappenheimer used to live in a fine house on the Charles River. He doesn't anymore. Roger Rosenblatt lives there now, Roger Rosenbintt is a poet, and everyone knows that poets are richer than biochemists. "What do you say about that, Max?" a reporter inquired of Professor Pappenheimer. "What can you do?" he said, shrugging his shoulders. "The rent was just too high."

Anthony Oettinger, professor of Linguistics, is fatally in love with a computer by the name of I.B. Emmy 60; she has shiny new keys and a self-cleaning memory system, which gives her the appeal of a perpetual tabula rasa. He is known to whisper FORTRAN into her phones at lunch hour. She does not go for wonks, so he wears a beret to look artsy. But despite her electric personality, he can't turn her on. His case is fatal; he kept falling on the ice in despair and abandon.

MS. McGEORGE, our little Bundy of joy--ice wouldn't melt under her feet. And Don Price, professor of Government, and monarch of the JFK School of Government, priced himself out of our market; he cancelled a date with the Governor of Rhode Island in order to skate for the Evening With Champions.

Doris Kearns (Helen is her middle name; the face that launched a thousand B-52's) mistook a particularly tall gentleman on the ice for another tall gentleman she knew. "If you don't stop telling me all those wonderful stories about yourself, I'm going to psychoanalyze you."

"Could you get me in the headlines?" the tall man inquired.

"Why you don't have a Texas accent! You're not the dude I'm after." Ms. Kearns pulled on the gentleman's ears until he yelped.

John Kenneth Galbraith skated off, his kilt swaying, mumbling unemployment figures under his breath. Since his last publication, it has been said that he has been unable to balance his check-book. "Plus the balance of power, carry the Big Six."

Alan Heimert and Bok were chortling in the Penalty Box and Heimert poked Bok in the back. "Did you know that Kenneth's next post will be Ambassador to the Vatican?"

"Why?" asked Bok.

"Because he and the Pope want to discuss infallibility, man to man."

Cries were heard emitting from the Ladies' Locker Room. Deane Lord, Director of Public Information at Harvard, was found dressed in her Marimekko dress. Yale crew jacket and Jamaican Calypso hat rolling on the floor shrieking. "Alleiuja, Alleluja!" Deane is always full of the Lord's joy and no one would have though of disturbing her ecstasy.

But her husband, Ed, came in and said, "I'm a Lord and you're not a lady."

Whereupon Deane drew herself up to her fulsome majesty and said, "Here at Harvard, it is the custom that the Director of Public Information not only put out the news, but should there be a luck, create it as well."