Cheap Seats
Fox pulls wool over Lakers’ eyes
In categorizing the NBA off-season, Peter May of the Boston Globe declares the Los Angeles Lakers the biggest team winner:
“GM Extraordinaire Jerry West said it best: ‘We have a championship-caliber team.’ Rick Fox is a terrific addition. The Lakers are six deep and that doesn’t include Kobe Bryant.
“The downside is that they still have Nick Van Exel. They also have to rely on Shaq, who, as we all know, has won everywhere except college and the pros.”
Rick Fox? Two words: Joe Woolf.
That Hogan, he never would keep quiet
Former San Francisco Chronicle sports editor Art Rosenbaum, remembering Ben Hogan in Golf Today:
“Ray Hayward was named golf writer of the Oakland Tribune. He knew nothing of golf and was advised by pro Howard Capps to watch young Ben Hogan in the Oakland Open.
“In those days, incidentally, there were no gallery ropes.
Hayward reported back to Capps, ‘I went right up to Hogan and he even spoke to me.’ ‘He did? What did he say?’ ‘Get your shadow out of the way, bud.”’
They could start their own alien nation
Do not think that the Ryder Cup isn’t big news in Craftsbury, Vt., home of maple syrup, snow shovels and flannel shirts.
Craftsbury is also home to Bill “Spaceman” Lee, the former Boston Red Sox left-hander and avid golfer, who isn’t a bit concerned that Jesper “the Swedish Spaceman” Parnevik might be horning in on his nickname territory.
“There’s only one Spaceman, I think,” Lee said. “But I don’t use copyrights or anything.”
Lee, 50, pitched 14 years in the majors with Boston and Montreal and had a 119-90 record. He also enjoyed a reputation as a - shall we say - free spirit.
When Lee ran for president on the Rhinoceros Party ticket in 1988, his political agenda included turning the White House into a Mexican restaurant. Lee also called for the elimination of chairs so we could have a nation that stood up for itself.
Parnevik has his own personal platform. He eats volcanic sand to cleanse his system, wears glasses with blinking lights to connect the left side of his brain to the right, believes in reincarnation and wears skin-tight, Popsicle-purple pants and a cap with a flipped-up bill.
It’s sort of a kindred look, Lee said.
“He definitely is kind of a clone,” Lee said. “He looks like he could be my son.”
Safe and sane
Tom FitzGerald in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Two of the biggest crowds at interleague (baseball) games (50,792 for Giants at A’s and 60,230 for Angels at Padres) can be explained by postgame fireworks displays.
“A’s assistant general manager Billy Beane says of the pyrotechnics: ‘They never go into a slump.”’ That must explain why the Mariners are such a big draw: The bullpen always gets lit up.
The last word …
“A city that embraced the Memphis Southmen of the World Football League in the 1970s, the Memphis Showboats of the United States Football League in the ‘80s, and even the Memphis Mad Dogs of the Canadian Football League in the ‘90s wants little to do with the NFL circus that Oilers owner Bud Adams has brought to town.”
- Rich Gosselin in the Dallas Morning News
, DataTimes