Cheap Seats

Curse of the Bambino? It’s an epidemic

First, horror novelist Stephen King was seriously injured when he was hit by a minivan in June.

Then Boston Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon was lost for the season because of an elbow injury.

And the latest novel by King, a Red Sox fan, is “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.”

Coincidence, asks Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe?

You be the judge.

“Why couldn’t King have done us all a favor and written `The Girl Who Loved Mark Portugal’ or `The Girl Who Loved John Wasdin’?” Shaughnessy wrote.

Keep your feet on the ground

No skydiving, no skiing, no race-car driving.

Those sorts of clauses in professional sports contracts are nothing new.

Now comes word from the British Broadcasting Corp. that an English Premier League team has banned soccer player Stefan Schwarz from space travel.

The BBC tagged Schwarz a “Yuri Gagarin wannabe” - a nod to the cosmonaut who in 1961 became the first man to orbit the Earth - and quoted Sunderland team executive John Fickling on the clause prohibiting the midfielder from booking passage on a proposed commercial space flight.

“One of Schwarz’s advisers has, indeed, got one of the places on the commercial flights (tentatively scheduled for 2002),” Fickling said. “And we were afraid that he may wish to take Stefan along with him. So we thought we’d better get this tied up now rather than at the time of the flight.”

Guess you can never be too cautious in big-time sports.

“At the end of the day we are protecting the club, really,” Fickling said. “It was a little bit of a light-hearted moment during protracted negotiations. But one day it could become quite acceptable to put such clauses in various contracts.”

No word yet on the team’s policy on time travel.

Apparently he forgot to do his homework

“We’d like to (win) with as much character and community involvement as possible,” Atlanta Hawks general manager Pete Babcock told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

This from someone who just traded for Isaiah Rider?

And he taught Walter Payton how to run

Detroit Pistons coach Alvin Gentry, on meeting a man claiming to be Glen Rice’s shooting instructor: “I was like, `Yeah, and your duties would be …?’ I mean, Glen Rice is one of the purest shooters ever. What’s this guy do, stand under the net and throw the ball back to him?”

The last word …

“Jimmy Johnson has turned Miami into something that looks so much like the Southern Raiders that the dolphin on Miami’s helmets should be wearing an eye patch.”

- Dan LeBatard of the Miami Herald on the state of the Miami Dolphins, whose roster includes three convicted felons and Tony Martin, who is standing trial for laundering drug money.