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At least he can phone in a box score

It’s the ultimate case of put up or shut up. Rio de Janeiro’s popular Flamengo soccer club has fired its coach, Edinho, and replaced him with a columnist who has no coaching experience.

“A crazy idea,” team president Kleber Leite called it. But still he hired Washington Rodrigues - the dean of Rio radio announcers and a columnist for the Jornal dos Sports - after Flemengo lost three straight games and was eliminated from the national playoffs.

“Maybe I’m not a soccer coach,” Rodrigues said, “but I’ve been in the window for 35 years and I’m not dumb. I know how the band plays.”

Brazilian coaches aren’t so sure.

“He went from slingshot to plate glass window,” said former national coach Tele Santana.

One of Rodrigues’ first tasks is to make up with Romario, the temperamental star Rodrigues once likened to “the owner of a sauna. He makes money with the sweat of others.”

At practice last week, Romario collapsed on the field and was taken to a hospital for tests, although team doctors said it didn’t seem serious.

He probably just fainted when he was told who his coach would be.

Just call him ‘Prime Time’

The Dodgers are locked in a torrid pennant race with the Colorado Rockies, but manager Tommy Lasorda is hyping a different one.

When center fielder Brett Butler crashed into the bricks of Wrigley Field on Tuesday and jammed his right wrist, Lasorda chugged out to check on him - while Cubs announcer Steve Stone told a TV audience Butler would be recovered by the time Lasorda got there.

“I’ll race his (butt) tomorrow,” raged Lasorda, who is facing surgery on both knees. “I’ll take an Indocin and I’m gone. Cloud of dust!” Lasorda actually was dogged worse by Butler, who well knows his manager’s penchant for on-field appearances in televised games. “Did you come out for me or for you?” Butler asked.

Petty bickerings

Former driver Richard Petty, who won a gazillion NASCAR races in his famous No. 43, is a staunch Republican and a longtime North Carolina politician with a notion of running for president next year.

“Clinton’s the 42nd president,” he said. “Who’s better for No. 43?”

Oh, maybe someone whose idea of foreign policy goes beyond owning a set of metric wrenches.

Now leading in the McLaren Sheik …

David E. Davis Jr., editor of Automobile magazine, recalled a conversation with the late Juan Manuel Fangio in which the five-time world Grand Prix champion bemoaned the commercialism in racing.

“When I raced, I raced for my country,” Fangio said. “It was a matter of pride. Today, a talented young driver can give his life for a brand of condoms.”

Good point, although the condom analogy may be a bit of a stretch.

The last word …

“On Halloween night, I’m either going to be still celebrating what we’ve just accomplished, or I’m going to be recovering from a botched suicide attempt.”

- General manager Bill Bavasi, on his fading California Angels

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