Cheap Seats
Dumb and dumber
Gunter Parche, meet James E. Gilleran. Parche, the animal that stabbed Monica Seles, and Gilleran may be soulmates, if not cellmates. Gilleran stands accused of threatening to blow up the Pontiac Silverdome if Detroit Lions running back Barry Sanders does not put up “big numbers” this season. (Gilleran has pleaded innocent.) In a two-page letter sent earlier this month to Lions owner William Clay Ford, Gilleran allegedly told Sanders, “I will be watchin’ the scoreboard at the end of the year for the final figures. … And they better be big numbers.”
If not, Gilleran allegedly wrote, the Silverdome would be “coming down” and that C-4, an explosive compound, “should do it.”
Looks like Gilleran could be putting up some big numbers, too - like 24 months in the federal pen.
Leisurely stroll
Stan Holman insists he wasn’t planning on showing up the field in the Pioneer Plod 10-kilometer race July 15 in Davenport. It just turned out that way.
The Spokane distance runner won in 34 minutes, 45 seconds - a stunning time, considering Holman pushed his two kids in a stroller the entire way. “I was just going to go watch my wife run the 10K,” Holman explained. “Then I just asked her, ‘Maybe I’ll run?’ I had to race the next day, so I thought I’d run easy - but it’s kind of hard to run easy. You get in a race, and you want to race.”
For good measure, Holman managed to finish second the following day at the Newman Lake 25K. The kids - aptly named Miles (20 months), and Mariah (9 months) - took the day off. “They love it,” Holman said. “I think … I hope.”
But is it legal? Stan’s wife, Esther, isn’t so sure. “The stroller says not to exceed 10 miles-per-hour,” she said. “Well, he blew that one.”
At ISU, truth is stranger than fiction
From this month’s installment of Deep Thoughts With Idaho State Football Coach Brian McNeely: When two ISU players were charged recently with statutory rape involving two 14-year-old girls, McNeely was ready. “The two young men that are presently on the team are great men,” McNeely observed. “They have had no previous trouble of any kind, and they have represented ISU well on and off the field.”
He wasn’t finished: “It’s inherent in any program that you will have some problems. But it’s not any greater than any other university is going to have.”
It isn’t any greater because it’s worse. Worse than the time ISU officials took a test for one of McNeely’s players. And worse than the time players complained McNeely had made them partake in religious gatherings.
A quadruple-eagle, for the record
Shaun Lynch pulled out the 3-iron on the 496-yard par-5 dogleg 17th hole last week at Teign Valley Golf Club near Exeter, England. It was enough.
The 33-year-old Lynch cut the dogleg by driving over a 20-foot hedge. The shot bounced down the steep fairway and rolled all the way into the cup.
“I had no idea where it had gone,” Lynch said.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the previous longest ace on a dogleg came in 1962 at the 480-yard fifth at the Hope Country Club in Arkansas.
The last word …
“My name is Nate Newton. I’m an All-Pro guard with the Dallas Cowboys. I play excellent football. If you have any questions about that, ask. If you want to know about a fat farm, you have to go to California and find stars like Dom DeLuise.”
- Newton’s response when asked about dropping 40 pounds in about 40 days before training camp
, DataTimes