President Bok, and three other Boston-area university presidents, lost their World Series bets with Warren G. Bennis, president of the University of Cincinnati, at 11:34 Wednesday night.

Two days later Bok was "still considering what quantity of Boston baked beans would be appropriate to celebrate the happy Cincinnati victory," according to a message relayed yesterday through his administrative assistant, Elizabeth Keul. Keul attributed the delay in the bean-quantity decision to "other time commitments."

Bennis, the victor, called Bok a man of "high integrity and probity" yesterday. He said he did not expect "the president of one of our most august institutions to welch."

"If the news leaked," he said, "imagine what the Cincinnati Inquirer would say."

East versus West

On the issue of bean quantity, Bennis said Bok had only mentioned a "small portion" in his October 13 reply to Bennis's challenge. "But smallness in Harvard terms may be large in Midwestern terms," he said.

John R. Silber, president of Boston University and another loser, said yesterday that he had already written Bennis to announce the mailing of half a dozen live lobsters, "six little green beasties from the North Atlantic that will obligingly take on the colors of Cincinnati when properly immersed in boiling water."

Carlo Goline, chancellor of UMass, Boston, doubled Bennis's stake of one case of metts sausage (a Cincinnati specialty), according to UMass's public relations 6