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Super shoe
An athletic shoe modeled after Michael Jordan’s Ferrari 550 Maranello sports car was awarded the government’s 400,000th design patent.
The high-tech shoe includes an air-intake pocket similar to that on the Ferrari. The shoe will be available next month at $140-150.
Don’t even bother to price the Ferrari.
Big and Tall vs. Plain Short
“This is a fight between tall millionaires and short millionaires,” writes Tony Kornheiser (Washington Post) on the NBA lockout. “As such it’s rather hard for most of us to have a rooting interest in who wins.
“As my friend, the Chicago sportswriter Sam Smith, says, ‘It’s like watching two limousines collide. One guy gets out of the back seat of one limo complaining that he spilled his glass of Lafitte-Rothschild wine in the collision. And the guy from the other limo gets out, mortified that his gold Rolex was scratched.’
“Ah, the problems of the rich.”
Lockout, Part II
Shaun Powell of Newsday, writing on the NBA lockout: “By canceling the November schedule, the owners did most basketball fans a favor. The opening month of a long six-month season hardly captures anyone’s imagination.
“The games aren’t very meaningful or critical in a league in which only the mediocre and truly awful fail to make the playoffs.”
Correction: Mediocre teams DO make the playoffs.
Marathon man
Jerry Dunn, a massage therapist from Spearfish, S.D., will run his 29th marathon in 29 days today when he competes in the 29th New York City Marathon.
To commemorate the race’s anniversary, Dunn began running the marathon distance of 26 miles, 385 yards, through Central Park, the original race course, daily on Oct. 4. After completing that route again Saturday, Dunn will run the present course through the city’s five boroughs today.
Dunn, 52, holds the record for most marathons run in one year with 104. He also ran 26 consecutive marathons to commemorate the 100th running of the Boston Marathon and 13 consecutive marathons to mark the 13th anniversary of the Los Angeles Marathon.
Dunn’s motto is: “Don’t limit your challenges, challenge your limits.”
With agents like these …
When sprinter Ben Johnson recently ran against a standardbred pacer, a thoroughbred (which won) and a stock car in a charity event, Johnson’s agent, Morris Chrobotek, couldn’t resist joking about the strange event involving his client, banned from official competition for steroid use,
“I want the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport to test the horses,” he said “We ask that (they) personally go out and take the urine from them. We want someone to look at the engine of the car, too.”
The last word …
“What a special gift it is to be able to improve a place by leaving it. Warts. Weeds. Albert Belle. The list isn’t that long.”
- Bernie Lincicome, Chicago Tribune, on the prospect of Belle leaving the White Sox via free agency.