Cheap Seats

Clean-up man

John Madden commenting on his long-time television partnership with Pat Summerall on NFL games:

“I kind of ramble and don’t make sense a lot of time. He then puts the period at the end of my sentences or a sentence at the end of my paragraphs. He makes sense of what I say.”

Just wing it, baby

Kansas City quarterback Elvis Grbac is busy denying a New York Times report that when he was in San Francisco, Mike Shanahan, then the 49ers’ offensive coordinator, ordered him to throw a warm-up pass at the head of Al Davis, the Raiders’ owner, in 1994.

“All he said was, ‘Let’s run the go route, which we ran in every warm-ups. He said something like, ‘Al Davis is over there.’ But he never told me to throw the ball at him. I remember throwing over Al Davis’ head. He moved out of the way and kind of looked at Shanahan. But that was it,” Grbac said.

Shanahan, now the Denver coach, didn’t exactly deny the report. “Would I do something like that?” he said.

Raiders requiem

Woody Paige in the Denver Post: “The Raiders aren’t worth killing anymore. We shouldn’t waste our hate on them. There are bigger fish to salute.

“The Broncos now are what the Raiders used to be, and the Raiders have become what the Broncos once were.

“The Broncos are the Evander Holyfields, world heavyweight champions. The Raiders are Mike Tysons, champs turned chumps who just seek another ear to bite, another eye to gouge, another fight to fight.”

Pepe Le Pew strikes back

San Diego reliever Roberto Ramirez thought it was a pretty good idea at the time. Boy, was he wrong. Ramirez saw the skunk who lives in the bowels of Qualcomm Stadium the other night, poking his head out near the Padres bullpen.

Ramirez fired a baseball at the skunk but missed. The skunk came back with a fastball of his own, spraying toward the bullpen. The relievers immediately scattered as the odor permeated the left field corner of the stands.

“The dumb things done and said in the bullpen should remain in the bullpen,” Padres reliever Randy Myers said.

Jolt of Joe

Joe DiMaggio didn’t take androstenedione, the muscle-building substance many people believe helped Mark McGwire bulk up enough to break Roger Maris’ home run record. But DiMaggio acknowledged he had a bit of help.

“All I ever did was ask (equipment manager) Pete Sheehy for half a cup of coffee when I got in the clubhouse,” DiMaggio told the New York Times. “But there were a lot of half-cups. It stayed hot that way.”

Synch or swim … but look good

Synchronized swimming is scorned by many skeptics who consider it more theatrical than athletic. Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno is among the unconverted, even after watching Canadian swimmer Valerie Hould-Marchand win a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games with a routine that had a “Romeo and Juliet” theme.

Wrote DiManno, “So young, so tragic. So much makeup.”

The last word …

“Oregon State, a Pac-10 school, is $8.2 million in the red. Who’s handling the budget in Corvallis, Boris Yeltsin?”

- San Diego Union-Tribune sportswriter Nick Canepa