Cheap Seats
A loud mouth isn’t a disability?
Robin Ficker, who mercilessly taunted Washington Bullet opponents behind the visitors’ bench, won’t have the same seats they’re designated for the handicapped when the renamed Washington Wizards play their first game in a new arena in December.
Ficker taunted all the big-name stars and constantly needled Charles Barkley about his ambition to become governor of Alabama, shouting questions about the economy, health care and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Ficker remembers Barkley’s response to one policy question: “Well, I do have a view on the death penalty: They should use it on you.”
A greeting that calls for a penal probe
It wasn’t your typical mug shot.
There was ball player Jose Canseco, jailed and awaiting a bond hearing Thursday on charges of hitting his wife.
Surrounding him: four or five fawning Dade County, Fla., corrections officers, so starstruck they grabbed an Instamatic camera and sidled up, all smiles, posing for some quick pics with the Oakland A’s slugger.
A jailhouse video camera caught the scene.
Were the officers a bit too buddy-buddy with the 33-yearold Canseco, who stands accused of striking estranged wife Jessica on the back of her head and face? An internal investigation is under way to find out.
“We understand that employees can be overwhelmed by celebrities,” corrections department spokeswoman Janelle Hall said. “But we’re going to make sure that the policies we have in place were not broken.”
Hall couldn’t name any specific rules that might have been violated.
You mean the specific rules call for guards to roll out the red carpet for all inmates?
Cowboys feel heat from road lickings
It’s gloom and doom in Dallas.
This from Randy Galloway of the Dallas Morning News: “Forget the postseason. Forget the Cowboys. Ding-dong Dallas is dead. By Christmas, Jerry (Jones) will be stuffing stockings with pink slips.”
Galloway’s colleague, Frank Luksa, wrote: “The Cowboys aren’t America’s team anymore. They’re more like America’s guest. The team is 1-5 on the road, a record flat enough to qualify as a road kill.”
Chucking with Chuckles
Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post, commenting on Charles Barkley throwing a man through a plate-glass window: “Let’s feel good that Charles isn’t crewing in the Whitbread ‘Round-the-World Race, because all we’d ever hear on board his ship late at night is ‘Man overboard!”’
That’s what you call a tough crowd
Bob Uecker, World Series television analyst and former major league catcher, once said: “Philly fans are so mean that one Easter Sunday, when the players staged an Easter-egg hunt for their kids, the fans booed the kids who didn’t find any eggs.”
The last word …
“There’s something inside him that’s kind of contagious. He’s got something like an itch, and I want to scratch it and see exactly what he’s got.”
- Arizona Cardinals coach Vince Tobin, on rookie quarterback Jake Plummer