Just beam him up

How fast is the Phoenix Suns’ Steve Nash? Esquire magazine writer Chuck Klosterman didn’t get a total appreciation of Nash’s speed until after their interview outside a restaurant in Manhattan. It came when Nash’s wife requested – via text message – that he needed to purchase some food for their twin girls.

So long turned into so fast.

“I reached down to get my umbrella off a chair,” Klosterman wrote in the November issue. “By the time I returned to an upright position, Steve Nash was already on the other side of the street. It was like someone had taken a laser beam, obliterated every atom in his body, and instantaneously reconstructed him 40 feet to the west.

“But the bottom line is that Steve Nash can accelerate in a way that you cannot possibly comprehend. Have you ever seen a college pitcher get struck by a line drive that was hit off an aluminum bat? He’s like that line drive.”

Here’s ‘waasup’ with Yao

Brook Larmer, former Newsweek bureau chief in Shanghai who has covered Yao Ming’s court exploits since 1999, has written a book, “Operation Yao Ming.”

Several chapters deal with the Chinese center’s rookie season with the Houston Rockets, detailing his on- and off-court education, including his need to learn a new language.

Intriguing to Yao was the greeting, “Waasup.” According to Larmer, that “sounded vaguely like a vulgarity in the Shanghainese dialect and (Yao) used it every time he greeted his new teammates.”

Then there was the time Kelvin Cato asked when Yao would invite the team to his “crib” for a party.

Yao explained that he had no furniture.

Larmer explained Yao’s hesitancy: “He wouldn’t be having a party at his house anytime soon, and the reason was more than slightly embarrassing: His mother wouldn’t allow it.”

Majority rules

The Sporting News conducted a staff poll, asking, “What best summarizes your feelings for Scooter, the animated talking baseball on Fox?”

“I get a kick out of the little guy.” 10 percent.

“Send him down to the minors.” 19 percent.

“I’m not a fan of him, but he doesn’t bother me.” 26 percent.

“Send him to a slow, painful death.” 45 percent.

Not-so-old complaints

Columnist Gary Shelton’s riff in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times on being old: “Sports writers as golf officials made me old. The BCS made me old. Movies that portray Adam Sandler as a great athlete made me old.

“You know what makes me want to take up whittlin’? Young people.

“Freddy Adu is 16 and is talking about a trade. Delmon Young is ticked off he isn’t in the majors at 19.

“Despite a couple of guys named Cal Ripken and Alex Rodriguez, B.J. Upton has decided at 21 he doesn’t want to move to third.

“Michelle Wie is 16 and has $10 million in the bank, which means my 10-year-old daughter has some work to do.”

The last word

U.S. cross-country skier Andrew Newell, to Outside magazine, on being a world-class Nordic skier:

“We push our bodies above and beyond what is even considered healthy. I throw up after probably half my races.”