Cheap Seats
High school reunion
It was another thrilling comeback for the Denver Broncos’ Super Bowl hero on Thursday when the athletic field where John Elway starred in high school was renamed John Elway Stadium.
“Chase your dreams, because dreams happen,” Elway told students attending the ceremony. “I’m very grateful, very proud of Granada Hills High School.”
Elway starred in football and baseball at Granada Hills (near Los Angeles) in 1977-79. The football team led by Elway and coached by his father Jack won a city championship in 1979 before both left for college careers that included stops at Stanford University.
Lakers don’t get it
Bob Ryan in the Boston Globe: “You heard so much about Utah’s incessant use of the pick-and-roll in Los Angeles. Well, guess what. Chicago isn’t Los Angeles.
“The Lakers are an immature team that still can’t be bothered about learning how to play basketball.
“Rick Fox is probably the only player on that team who understands why they lost.”
A tough one to swallow
Mike Hargrove, Cleveland Indians manager, on a 483-foot home run by Jim Thome last Sunday that landed in a restaurant in center field at Toronto’s SkyDome:
“I think the ball ended up in somebody’s Caesar salad as one big crouton.”
From the department of redundancies
“Watching the Jazz run that pick-and-roll to death, I’m reminded of Nebraska football, where they run the same play over and over, and nobody can stop it.”
Except, maybe, for a Lincoln process server. - Bob Kravitz in the Rocky Mountain News.
Take your pick
Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press reveals what the Detroit Red Wings do to unwind when they’re not playing.
Are you ready for chess?
“You ask them about a particularly hard check in last night’s game, and they’re liable to say, ‘It wasn’t that hard. I just shifted my king and took his bishop. Checkmate.’
“Let’s face it. Only hockey gives you this. A bunch of guys with scars and missing teeth gathered around the chessboard is either the greatest endorsement for the NHL, or a sure sign the players have taken too many blows to the head.”
Another columnist takes a shot
Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times ridiculed SuperSonics president Wally Walker’s “stand-up” routine at a news conference announcing the firing of Coach George Karl.
“The theme was trust, or lack of trust Wally felt for Karl,” Kelley wrote. “It was all about leaks. Walker sounded as if he were Henry Kissinger engaged in some covert activity in Southeast Asia.”
The last word …
“It was a first-class, five-star, Jack Nicholson nutty. It will go down as the water-cooler-flyin’, F-bombs flyin’, dugout-roofshakin’, don’t-be-jakin’, buns-toastin’, rump-roastin’ Mo Vaughn slam.”
- Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe, describing Mo Vaughn’s dugout tirade last Sunday as the Yankees rallied from an 11-0 deficit to 11-7 before losing, 13-7, to the Red Sox.