Cheap Seats
Billy Joel on ice
Wayne Gretzky had a sense of humor even when he was being criticized during the Stanley Cup playoff series against the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1993 when he was with the Los Angeles Kings.
One Toronto writer said he was skating as if he had a piano on his back.
Gretzky, on the afternoon before Game 7, sipped tea with his agent and fired back:
“The piano man still has a tune to play.”
He scored three goals as the Kings won.
No skin like thin skin
UCLA football coach Bob Toledo is taking on two tough opponents: armchair quarterbacks and the Internet.
Fed up with Web-site chatter about his team, Toledo has closed the Bruins’ spring practices to all but credentialed reporters, players’ relatives, high school coaches and invited prospects.
School spokesman Marc Dellins said overzealous Bruins watchers were posting too many “inaccurate” spring practice reports on Internet sites.
Psst. Several of those reports have concluded that redshirt freshman left-hander Ryan McCann has been the most impressive of the five quarterbacks in camp.
A man who saves his words
Louisiana Tech receiver Troy Edwards found it a waste of time to be interviewed by every NFL team - his time and the teams’ time.
“It was stupid,” he told the Dallas Morning News. “Don’t interview me if you don’t want me; interview the players you think you want. The only team that was upfront with me was Denver. They shook my hand and said, `We know we don’t have a chance of getting you. We just want to tell you we think you’re a good player.”’
Flushed with his new fame
Mike Piazza walked the streets of New York with a reporter from GQ magazine and talked about the difference between Los Angeles and New York.
“I walk out in the morning, and the UPS guy tells me to go get ‘em or something,” he said. “It’s fine, but … there’s definitely something to be said for anonymity.”
He can usually handle the attention.
“Just sometimes you have to go somewhere,” he said. “I’m a regular person also, and I have things to do. I’m in a store and a guy says to me, `What are you doing here?’ `I’m buying toilet paper. What do you think I’m doing here?”’
A premier attraction
Coach Rick Pitino of the Boston Celtics had an interesting take on his team’s struggles.
“To me, this is not tragedy, this is adversity,” he told the Sporting News. “You can overcome adversity. You’re not going to overcome it with all-night meetings or things like that. The way to overcome it is through talent and wisdom. Believe it or not, I’m enjoying a lot of this.”
The last word …
“It was like a hockey game played between the blue lines.”
- Assistant Detroit GM and former Spokane manager Steve Lubratich, describing an unexpected 1-0 thriller between the Tigers and Twins