Cheap Seats
Numb to the world
Chicago Bear assistant coach Tony Wise told the Rockford (Ill.) Register Star that coach Dave Wannstedt is totally focused, despite an 0-7 record:
“Believe me, he doesn’t know that Princess Diana died. He doesn’t know the Cubs’ record. He almost doesn’t know what month it is.”
And he sure wishes he didn’t know that guy who traded to get Rick Mirer to quarterback his team.
An expert scouting report
When Houston Astros manager Larry Dierker was 18, he faced the Los Angeles Dodgers for the first time and struck out Frank Howard on three pitches. A veteran pitcher, Hal Woodeshick, asked, “Who told you how to pitch him like that?’ Dierker replied: “My brother.” “Your brother? Does he play ball?” Woodeshick asked.
“Yeah,” Dierker said. “In the Pony League. He’s 14 and he listens to all the Dodgers games on the radio. He told me I could get Howard out with a breaking ball, low and away.”
Round Mound of Rebound getting rounder
Eddie Sefko of the Houston Chronicle reports that Charles Barkley showed up at the Houston Rockets training camp so overweight that one teammate asked Barkley, “If he was in the first or second trimester.”
And the band played on
Just how offensive was the infamous performance by Stanford’s band at halftime of it’s football game against Notre Dame? Consider the details.
The parody of the Irish potato famine featured “Seamus O’Hungry,” portrayed by the band narrator as representative of a “sparse cultural heritage (that) consisted only of fighting, then starving.”
In another skit, a band member dressed as a Catholic cardinal and engaged in a mock debate with another band member as the devil: The cardinal expressed a belief in a flat Earth and rejected the theory of evolution.
Over the years, the Stanford band has had a reputation for scandalous behavior. The band already has been banned from Notre Dame’s stadium in South Bend, Ind., since a 1991 incident in which the drum major donned a nun’s habit and led the band while thumping a cross on a drum.
One woman, the story goes at Stanford, pummeled the drum major, telling him he was going to hell.
Just shut up and drive
At the opening of the new $15 million Speedworld attraction at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, comedian Rita Rudner climbed into the cockpit of the lifelike Indy race car.
She squawked and squirmed as the top of the cockpit was lowered around her head.
The three-quarter-size cars sit in front of screens that give the drivers the feel of being in the real thing, down to being jolted when they crash into walls or collide with other vehicles.
While many of the drivers honed their skills, Rudner found the 5 minutes behind the wheel unnerving.
Rudner joked with former driver Janet Guthrie as she poked along at a fraction of the 238 mph being run by some of the drivers in the simulator environment.
“You’re like an old lady on the freeway,” Guthrie yelled as Rudner bounced from wall to wall on the three-dimensional screen.
“I’m not in any hurry,” Rudner responded. “They’ll wait for me.”
“When is it going to end?” she asked at another point as other cars swished by her on the screen.
“Never, at this pace,” Guthrie responded.
The last word …
“If the people don’t want to come out to the park, nobody’s gonna stop them.”
- Yogi Berra
, DataTimes