But they’re not bitter
“We’re going to be tough to beat,” former Boston Red Sox center fielder and leadoff hitter Johnny Damon said after signing a four-year, $52-million deal with the New York Yankees.
Reaction was swift in coming.
“We?” asked the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy. “Johnny, how could you? It took you only a few minutes and $52 million to start calling the Yankees ‘we.’
“Actually, it’s pretty easy to understand. For all his athletic gifts, we always knew Johnny had the depth of your average kiddie pool.”
Raising a stink
Perennial English soccer power Arsenal is marketing its own after-shave – something called Arsenal 1886, which is described as “a sophisticated blend of bitter orange, bergamont and cedarwood.”
Eau de Arsenal will have its detractors, but as European soccer’s Web site, UEFA.com, puts it, this “is no doubt a vast improvement on the scent of bitter liniment, stale sweat and stinky boots which pervades most club dressing rooms.”
Getting back down to earth
Kyle Boller’s performance in dismantling the hapless Green Bay Packers on Monday night has given the Baltimore Raven quarterback’s future new life, says Peter Schmuck of the Baltimore Sun.
It wasn’t always that way.
“The Ravens are wrapping up a horribly disappointing season,” Schmuck wrote, “in which Boller’s status as the team’s field leader has been thrown so far up in the air that they could slap a Goodyear sign on it and send it to cover the Rose Bowl.”
Clutch catch
The man who caught a baby tossed from a burning building in the Bronx got a nod from NBC’s Conan O’Brien.
“They’re not sure who the man is,” O’Brien said, “but they are sure he doesn’t play for the Jets.”
Name that team
American sports teams, for the most part, have brief, snappy, headline-friendly names. Not so in international soccer.
Responding to a reader query, England’s Guardian newspaper recently set out to find the sport’s longest team name.
One candidate was Germany’s Verein fur Leibesubungen Borussia Moenchengladbach, but it wasn’t the winner. Not even close.
Neither, astonishingly, was Clyb Pel-droed Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgo- gerychwyrndrobwylllantysiliogogogoch of Wales.
No, until another candidate comes along, the leader is the Dutch club NAC Breda, whose full name is Nooit Opgeven Altijd Doorzetten Aangenaam Door Vermaak En Nuttig Door Ontspanning Combinatie Breda.
Try sticking that on a jersey.