Cheap Seats
In need of a good CPA
Fidel Castro is upset with press reports that said Orlando Hernandez, the pitcher who recently escaped Cuba, made the equivalent of $8 a month in Cuba.
Said Michael Ventre of MSNBC: “Castro wanted it made clear that that figure was after taxes.”
An idiot in training?
From the The Vent column of readers’ rantings in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Am I the only one who believes that Terry Bradshaw would have to go to night school to become a fool?”
It was a game of biblical proportions
The Denver Broncos suffered their first of four Super Bowl losses after the 1977 season. As long-suffering Denver fan John Giodano told the Boston Globe:
“We had Haven Moses on that ‘77 team. I mean, even Moses couldn’t get us to the promised land.”
Don’t let this guy pick stocks for you
Adding one more expert who picked Green Bay in a blowout win over Denver in the Super Bowl, Bob Verdi of the Chicago Tribune:
“Denver has no chance. Go see ‘Titanic’ instead and root for the boat. It’s a better bet than the Broncos.”
Playing Politics sometimes get you into trouble
Owner-trainer Richard Fruzzetti does not lie awake at night worrying about having Playing Politics claimed from him, even though the horse has won 25 races.
That’s because Playing Politics is a 16-year-old gelding with 201 starts and a barn full of patience-trying idiosyncrasies.
Playing Politics, believed to be the oldest horse currently racing in the United States, won’t travel on a van with another horse, but will only work in company with another horse.
He also snacks on oranges.
“My wife tells me, ‘If you actually were a horse trainer, he would have been gone a long time ago. But you are a horse lover,”’ said Fruzzetti.
When Playing Politics was taken off the van after a trip from New Jersey early in his career, “he was cut all over,” Fruzzetti said. “I asked the driver, ‘What did you do, drop him? Why didn’t you check on him?’ He said, ‘I didn’t hear anything back there.”’
The first time Fruzzetti put Playing Politics on his van, the horse flipped over.
“It took me about three years to figure him out,” Fruzzetti said. “You have to put him in the van by himself. You walk him in and hook him in front of a window, and you open the window a crack so he gets a little air.”
While Playing Politics doesn’t mind racing, he doesn’t like to train.
“You have to work him with another horse,” Fruzzetti said. “He won’t even gallop around the track by himself. You have to fool him, make him think he’s going to race.”
If Playing Politics were a human, he would have the perfect temperament to be a star in the NBA. Move over Charles Barkley.
No wonder Lurch looked like he did
Those pills left behind in the Chinese swimmers’ motel at the world championships in Perth, Australia, allegedly contained poison from a cane toad, the gallbladder of a musk and the gallstone of a cow.
Said Perth police Superintendent David Parkinson: “It sounds like the Addams Family, doesn’t it?”
The last word …
“Next year’s NHL All-Star game, they’re going to a new format: guys with all their own teeth vs. guys with bridges.”
- Bob Kravitz, Rocky Mountain News
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo