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So this is why they fought for Title IX

Listen up, you testosterone thugs who think we don’t pay enough attention to wrestling.

Here’s one that caught our eye:

Teresa Gordon-Dick, a 12-year-old girl from Redwood Valley, Calif., pinned four of her five boy opponents and became USA Wrestling’s first female national champion in a coed bracket.

Gordon-Dick won the Greco-Roman gold medal in the 100-pound class of the 11- and 12-year-old division of the USA Wrestling Kids National Tournament in Waterloo, Iowa.

Her semifinal victory was a 13-1 technical fall. Gordon-Dick pinned her first opponent in 47 seconds. Her other pins came in 53 seconds in the first round, 2:54 in the second and 46 seconds in the quarterfinals.

Which means she still had time to get home to help her mom clean house and make dinner.

He thought it was from those yummy snacks

The Baltimore Orioles were loose enough these days to play a prank on manager Davey Johnson, replacing the No. 15 jersey in his locker with the No. 39 jersey of rail-thin, 175-pound pitcher Mike Johnson. The manager donned the jersey and went to the dugout, where television cameras caught him squirming uncomfortably.

“I started thinking, ‘Man, this uniform’s getting tight. I’ve got to cut down on my weight. I’m blowing up like a balloon,”’ Davey Johnson said. “Finally, I looked down the runway to the clubhouse, and there was Mike, holding my uniform and smiling.

“I told him he would never pitch for me again.”

And scratching is freedom of choice, too?

Phil Garner is no fan of the decision to ban chewing tobacco from tonight’s All-Star Game.

The Milwaukee Brewers manager - who participated in the midsummer game three times during his playing career - said it wasn’t a matter of public health or of promoting a positive image but simply one of freedom of choice.

“I’ll probably catch some flak about this, but for me the question goes more and more toward individual liberties,” Garner said as he puffed on a cigar.

“I think more and more as our government tells us you can’t do this - the government’s not necessarily doing this - but it’s Big Brother telling you: ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that.”’

Garner continued: “Why not in the next round let’s eliminate fat?” Garner said. “Because if we’re going to say that cigarettes cause all kinds of problems health-wise in our country and because of the billions of dollars in damage it causes that we’ve got to eliminate that for a healthy society, well, fat causes a lot more problems than cigarettes do.”

But we’ve decided to stick to our 20-Ruffles-a-day habit rather than a pack of Marlboros.

Wasn’t it just last year that he worked for NBC?

Mike Ditka, the new coach of the New Orleans Saints, will close regular-season practices to the media for the first time in the history of the franchise.

“There’s no reason for anybody to see what we’re doing. Nobody except us,” Ditka said.

Ditka did throw a bone to the media - allowing access to pre-practice stretching and warmups.

The last word …

“He’s not human. He doesn’t count. Check his blood. Mac’s an alien from the future who’s come back to show us how to play the game.”

- Oakland’s Jose Canseco on teammate Mark McGwire , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo