Cheap Seats
Talk about a great card trick
Even though Wilson Alvarez has never won more than 15 games in a season, the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays signed the former San Francisco Giant pitcher to a five-year, $35-million contract.
Said Gary Shelton of the St. Petersburg Times: “His payroll says he is an ace; his resume says he is more like, say, a 10 of clubs.”
And the Giants would be the joker in this deck.
Every man has his price
Over a late-night dinner after watching Chuck Daly agonize on the sideline of a recent Orlando Magic game, a friend told him: “I wouldn’t have your job for a million bucks.”
Daly’s top assistant, Brendan Suhr, laughed and broke in: “Neither would Chuck!”
But he has no qualms about taking $5 mil.
Who said that?
New York Jets cornerback Otis Smith started a recent game against the Chicago Bears after he had told reporters he had been benched.
“I don’t believe I said that,” Smith said later. “If I said that, I misquoted myself.”
Coming to you from Siberia
Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser, on Fox NFL television color commentator Jerry Glanville:
“There is national coverage and regional coverage - then there’s Glanville coverage. If Glanville is doing a game, Fox is broadcasting to an area so small that your neighbors across the street may not get it.
“Here’s how far down on the pecking order Glanville is: The color man just below Glanville is Boris Yeltsin.”
Movin’ on up
Indiana Pacers coach Larry Bird said he still hasn’t forgotten the sight of Robert Horry throwing a towel in Phoenix coach Danny Ainge’s face last year in Boston.
“They should have suspended that guy (Horry),” Bird told Norm Frauenheim of the Arizona Republic. “That was a real embarrassment to the NBA. But instead of a suspension, the guy got traded to the league’s best team, the Lakers. They should have sent him to Siberia.”
Golden State’s Latrell Sprewell should have kept his hands to himself and just thrown in the towel.
He’s no serial killer
San Francisco mayor Willie Brown told the San Francisco Examiner after the incident in which All-Star Sprewell assaulted Warriors coach P.J. Carlesimo that, “Maybe the coach deserved choking. I’m not justifying what he did was right. But nobody is asking why he did it or what might have prompted him.”
Sprewell attacked Carlesimo at a practice, wrapping his hands around Carlesimo’s neck and threatening to kill him. He was suspended for a year, and his contract was voided by the Warriors.
“We also need to find out the root causes” of the assault, Brown said, adding that Sprewell is “being held up as if he’s Charlie Manson.”
Let’s see, last time we checked, ol’ Charlie was still sleeping in the Gray Bar Hotel, wasn’t he?
The last word …
“I don’t want to say anything bad about the mayor, but he’s an idiot.”
- Charles Barkley, speaking about Mayor Brown
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo