Cheap Seats
The check is in the mail
Among the tributes and awards John Stockton received after breaking the NBA’s career assists record last week was a check for $9,922 from the league for donation to the charity of his choice. Teammate Adam Keefe had a beneficiary in mind.
“How about the Stanford Alumni Association,” said Keefe - a Stanford alum himself, if you couldn’t already guess.
“It’ll go to Washington State first,” retorted Stockton, a Gonzaga grad and a devoted anti-Coug.
Cinderella boy … out of nowhere …
Bill Murray was back at Poppy Hills last week, though not all the way back. Feeling a bit under the weather and perhaps still smarting from his treatment by noted PGA red-tushes Deane Beman and Tom Watson at last year’s AT&T National Pro-Am, it was a subdued Carl the Greenskeeper who played in a foursome with Scott Simpson, Jeff Sluman and Cubs first baseman Mark Grace.
It was also a better golfer. Helped by lessons from teaching guru Kip Puterbaugh, Murray teamed with Simpson to shoot a first-round 63. Still, Murray wasn’t spinning any little old ladies into sand traps or heckling Dan Quayle. At one point, he was even a straight man - asking the stoic Simpson where he should hit the ball after being caught in the trees. “Anywhere on the course,” Simpson said.
Moments earlier, Murray was searching for his ball in deep grass when he noticed 28-year-old Ali Kerr sipping an iced beverage behind a gallery rope.
“What’re you drinking there?” he inquired.
“Brandy,” said Kerr, extending her glass. “You want some?” To the crowd’s shock, Murray declined.
“We’re all really glad to have you back this year, Bill,” she said.
“Awwwww, that’s just the booze talking,” he said.
Give him a C for effort
And you thought that Yinka Dare’s rookie season with the New Jersey Nets was a waste? Guess again. While sitting on the bench recently, Dare turned to Jayson Williams and asked what the “C” on Christian Laettner’s jersey meant.
Replied Williams: “Caucasian.”
And we thought it stood for “crybaby.”
If John Salley wore a “C” on his jersey, it would have to stand for “comedian.” In keeping with a series of ceremonies honoring their championship teams, the Pistons had Joe Dumars and Vinnie Johnson present Salley with his jersey in a frame. Said Salley: “Two guys who never passed me the ball just gave me my jersey.”
The last word …
“I’m the one to beat. I’m the flying duck everyone’s trying to shoot down. But what they don’t know is I’m in a bulletproof vest. And I have a gun to shoot back.”
- IBF super middleweight champ Roy Jones Jr.