Cheap Seats
`We’re more pathetic than you’
Visiting San Diego recently, Florida Marlins manager John Boles expressed offense at a suggestion that the Padres had conducted a fire sale to rival that of Florida’s. No way, said Boles.
After all, the Marlins are going down “as the king of dismantlers. I mean, ours was dismantling at its finest, record-breaking.”
Prisoner of his passion
Karl Malone certainly knows how to get away from it all.
During last year’s NBA Finals in Chicago - the day before the Jazz needed a win in Game 5 to stay alive - Malone spent an afternoon with an Illinois Highway Patrol officer. Among other things, Malone and his new friend dropped by a weigh station and watched big-rig trucks being checked.
During the Jazz first-round series against Sacramento Kings, Malone took off again.
This time, he went on a 5-hour tour of the historic prison in Folsom, Calif., about 30 miles north of Sacramento.
Malone met the warden and visited the prison archives where he learned, among other things, the record time (16 minutes) it took an unfortunate prisoner to die after being hanged.
“I visit prisons all the time; people just don’t know about it,” said Malone. “Prisons intrigue me. What can I say? I’m into law enforcement, prisons, stuff like that.”
During his tour, Malone’s guide was a prison guard who might become a hunting partner - “He’s been all over Colorado, Wyoming, Montana. We exchanged numbers.”
Malone also met a few inmates.
“A lot of them are big Jazz fans,” he said. “Some of them were Kings fans. But almost all of them watch basketball. One guy told me, `I had to come all the way to prison to meet Karl Malone.”’
Broadcasters play name game
Recently in Denver, the starter for the Mets was named Bobby Jones. And the starter for the Rockies was named - yep - Bobby Jones.
Two men. One name. Same game. It was like one of those “Star Trek ”episodes in which the crew was confused for an entire hour by mysterious parallel universes,” reported Jayson Stark of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“The only good thing about it, as a broadcaster,” Rockies radio voice Wayne Hagin told Stark “was you couldn’t get it wrong.”
Mets radio man Gary Cohen agreed that there are worse fates for broadcasters: “A broadcaster’s nightmare is doing the Polish hockey team in the ‘92 Olympics, which I did.”
An upside to this route
On May 7 at Cleveland, the Indians pulled off an unbelievable feat against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays by winning by nine runs after trailing by eight. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, they’re the first team in this century to storm from at least eight runs behind to win by nine or more.
It was Devil Rays 10, Indians 2 in the bottom of the sixth. But the Indians then put up consecutive innings of four runs, seven and seven more. And when the dust cleared, somehow they had won, 20-11.
“I experienced every emotion you could have,” Indians general manager John Hart said. “I went from, `Oh God, this is embarrassing,’ to, `Geez,’ to, `Whoa, whoooooa, yeahhhhh.”’
Of course, the Devil Rays got to do that in reverse. Asked after the game if he needed anything for the pain, Devil Rays manager Larry Rothschild replied: “Yes. Strychnine.”
The last word …
“Why was it that, when Baltimore played in Havana, not one member of the Orioles delegation defected?”
- Nick Canepa of the San Diego Union-Tribune.