Cheap Seats
Must be the 70-run rule
St. Francis of Illinois baseball coach Tony Delgado said he couldn’t tell his team to stop trying, even as it was routing Robert Morris 71-1 in a college game mercifully halted after four innings. “In a situation like this, you just keep playing baseball,” Delgado said.
Except there hadn’t been a situation like this. St. Francis scored 26 first-inning runs, an NCAA record.
After the second - the Fighting Saints had scored 48 runs by then - Delgado approached Robert Morris coach Gerald McNamara and offered to call it off.
Winning pitcher Steve Ochman could have gone on forever. “What else can you ask for than 71 runs?” he said. “I would like to get that every game, but that’s a little bit ridiculous.”
To say nothing of the three days’ rest between trips to the mound.
‘Worm’ removed to save humanity
Even Dennis Rodman’s likeness is getting ejected. The painting of the Chicago Bulls forward on billboard-type advertising - blamed for tying up traffic heading downtown on a busy Chicago expressway - will be painted over, officials of Bigsby & Kruthers clothiers, whose ad Rodman graces, said.
Rodman - wearing a suit and tie with cutouts of his interchangeable colored hair - will be whitewashed today from the large white building near the Kennedy Expressway. The likeness will be repainted on the other side of the building so that he can only be seen at a distance by commuters heading out of the city. The cutouts will be sold at auction for charity.
“If they want to take me down, let them take me down. It might save some lives,” Rodman said.
Gene Silverberg, Bigsby & Kruthers’ chief operating officer, said the move is based on concerns for safety. Gawking motorists had caused backups, police said.
“It seems not to be getting better quick enough. So we decided to move Dennis from the north wall to the south wall,” Silverberg said. “He deserves a place on the wall. He’s a very interesting Chicagoan.”
Rodman deserves a place on the post office wall.
Hola, Hideo
Along with shin guards and an oversized mitt for knuckleballs, standard equipment for catchers should include a pocket dictionary of foreign phrases.
Consider the linguistic plight of Mike Piazza of the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose pitching staff includes Hideo Nomo of Japan, Chan Ho Park of South Korea, two Mexicans and two Dominicans.
Mound conferences for the Dodgers can get downright confusing. In one game last summer, pitching coach Dave Wallace got totally mixed up. “I went out to talk to Nomo and I started speaking Spanish,” he said. “I caught myself and just started laughing. He looked at me and started laughing. And then he just said, ‘Bueno.”’
Dog days of the NBA
Charles Barkley has begun to sit in an oxygen chamber installed by the Phoenix Suns organization. “Maybe I’ll feel like 32 instead of 38,” said Barkley. “The NBA is like dog years. One season puts more than one year on you. Seriously, my body is close to 40.”
The last word …
“This is Beavis and Head-Butt.”
- NBA referee Mike Mathis, introducing his crew of Ken Mauer and Ted Bernhardt, who was butted by Rodman two weeks ago
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo