Cheap Seats
A woman’s place
Since none of the leading male candidates seems to want the job, why not a woman as England’s new national soccer coach?
Pamela Sharp, a 41-year-old mother of four from Ipswich, has written to the Football Association to apply for the position being vacated by Terry Venables this summer. Sharp says she knows little about soccer but “that hasn’t stopped other people taking the job in the past - so why should it stop me?”
Whoa, Nellie!
The Knicks recently lost to the Bucks at Madison Square Garden after center Patrick Ewing put up a 3-point shot on a crucial late possession. Ewing missed, but was fouled - then sank the first of three foul shots and clanged the last two.
Believe it or not, coach Don Nelson designed the play to go to Ewing, a 16 percent 3-point shooter.
The New York Post, ever graceful, headlined its sports section the following day with “Nellie’s Out To Launch.”
“Listen, when you need a 3-point shot and they know you need one, you better diagram one heck of a play to get one off,” Nelson said. “It doesn’t matter who shoots it; it’s whether you get a good look at one. And we did get a good look. You can’t ask for any more than that.”
Except maybe for a guy like Hubert Davis to shoot the ball. Davis, shooting 49 percent from 3-point range, was on the bench for the play.
Politics gets Nasty
That Romanian rogue, former tennis star Ilie Nastase, is running for mayor of Bucharest.
The 49-year-old Nastase told the daily Evenimentul Zilei that he would use his financial clout, business acumen and political contacts to give the grimy, crumbling capital a facelift. He said the idea to run for mayor came to him as he drove his car over Bucharest’s numerous and crater-like potholes.
His bid comes just seven weeks after he was elected a leading member of Romania’s ruling Social Democracy party.
“I am a manager and it disturbs me to see Bucharest as it is: in a sorry state,” said Nastase, who added that he would run under the slogan: “Ilie Nastase - an honest person.”
And it can run right under that old picture of him giving tennis fans the finger.
To protect and slur
The Packers’ Reggie White was ticked during the NFC Championship game with the Cowboys, but nothing like the way he’s honked at the Chattanooga police department, which he’s criticized for failing to solve the 1992 murder of his stepfather.
“A murderer is still on the loose,” he said. “I’m tired of hearing how they’re doing their best.”
Responded police spokesman Richard Heck, “Stop beating us up in the press. Pick up the phone if you want an update. And sweetening the reward with some of your fat salary wouldn’t hurt.”
The last word …
“History wasn’t bad, but world literature and all that? I (couldn’t) care less about what happened, all those fiction stories about what happened in the year 1500 or 1600. Half of ‘em aren’t even true.”
- Golfer John Daly, on his college interests
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo