Monday, 5-Aug-2002
Spurious
thoughts and idle musings from the sports week just past ...
Last week
gave us two perfect examples why it's so hard to take the WNBA seriously. First up was the incredible hoo-hah over the
league's first-ever, live and in color, officially notarized, in-game slamma
jamma by Hell Ay's Lisa Leslie. Oh, the
wonder of it all. Too bad she and her
Sparks girlz lost the game. But hey,
how bout that Dunk, y'all. And next up
was the "Kiss In" organized by Lesbians For Liberty who held a
slobberfest in the stands cause the New York team won't give them props for
buying lotsa tickets. Forget the fact
Lady Liberty has won nine of their last 11 to grab first place. Nope, they got dissed so they kissed. You go, girls.
Hi,
honey, how was your flight ??? Oh, not
bad, my Beechcraft Bonanza lost all power right after I took off. I circled back to land but I couldn't get
the flaps to work or the landing gear to drop down and the radio was dead so I
called 911 on my cell and told the tower I needed to bring it back in. So did you land on the runway ??? Nah, they wanted to charge me for emergency
foam so I bellyflopped that puppy on the grass next to the runway. Bye, sweetie, I'm going back out to take a
rented Cessna up so I can get back to Steeler camp. See ya.
I have no
idea if the above conversation actually took place but that's exactly what
happened to Pittsburgh big cheese Dan Rooney who also happens to be 70 years
old and just loves, I mean, loves to fly by himself. And last Wednesday evening at Allegheny County Airport, he did
indeed almost buy the farm. His 1981
single-engine, five-seater coughed and wheezed and spit the bit on him and so
it was grass city, baby. Afterwards,
Rooney insisted he didn't kiss off the foam option cause of the cost but you
never know with these salary cap-obsessed NFL owners.
Hey, just
what a hot summer week needed ... More mischief from the wonderful world of
figure skating as Italian police arrested a Russian mob wiseguy named Alimzhan
Tokhtakhounov on Wednesday for supposedly scheming to buy off some of the Salt
Lake Olympic skating judges. Too
funny. I mean, since when is the Mafia
in the skating bizness ??? Can you see
the great Don Vito Corleone counseling Michael about this nonsense ??? "Tattaglia's a sequin. He never coulda outjumped Santino. But I never knew until this day that it was
Barzini's choreography all along. I'll
make him a bouquet he can't refuse."
Welcome
to the Steve Spurrier Era ... He flies his Washington Gators halfway around the
world to Japan and runs up the score on the Niners' second string
dee-fense. Yep, twentysomething hours
in the air and twelve time zones just so he can piss off Steve Mariucci by
putting his first stringers in and going for it on 4th-and-1. And the game didn't even count. As much as I hate the Skins, I have to admit
... This could be as much fun as watching the Deltas ruin Faber's homecoming
parade. Ramming speed.
Dear
Glenn Robinson ... Please be informed that your services as a power forward are
no longer needed by the Milwaukee StarBucks.
You have been traded to the Atlanta ChickenHawks for Toni
"Everybody Loves Me, Nobody Wants Me" Kukoc, Leon "Funny
Farm" Smith and a 2003 first-round draft pick. In other words, we'd rather have Not Much, Nothing But Trouble
and Who The Hell Knows. Therefore,
please turn in your "Big Dog" nickname before you leave. Best wishes. Sincerely, George Karl.
All those
in favor of waiving the five-year waiting period for inducting Reds GM Jim
Bowden into the Hall of Fame of Incredibly Stupid Things To Say, raise your
hand. Quote. "If the players want to strike, they ought to just pick Sept
11 because that's what it's going to do to the game ... If they do walk out,
make sure it's Sept 11. Be
symbolic. Let Donald Fehr drive the
plane right into the building if that's what they want to do." Unquote.
Of course, in the real world, Bowden would find a pink slip on his desk
the next morning but in Bud Light's fantasia, Bowden only lost some coin and
got sent to his room without supper, I suppose. And somewhere the ghost of Al Campanis is picking his stunned jaw
up off the floor.
Not to be
outdone in the Stupidity Department is the big bad NFL who fined Monsanto Pope,
Denver's 7th round draft pick, 11 large for missing the league's mandatory June
rookie symposium in California. Don't
be fooled by that number ... Eleven boxes of ziti is more than a third of
Pope's $32,000 signing bonus. So why did
he miss the league's meeting to teach the rooks all about the hazards of life
in the big fishbowl ??? Because young
Mr Pope was back home in Virginia helping his sister give birth to her
son. Seems she had no one for support. No. One.
Parents long gone, the father nowhere in sight, two other brothers in
the can, you get the picture. Nicely
done, Uncle Monsanto. Hopefully,
there's an $11,000 check on its way back to you.
I know it
seems unfair to take so many shots at Bud "Anybody Seen My Spine?"
Selig but the man just insists on chewing his own shoe leather week in and week
out. Last week he was at it again
bashing the Twinks by calling their winning season an "aberration"
and insisting they're still a prime candidate to get a contraction bullet in
the neck next year. Let's go slow here
... Minnesota is 69-43. They lead the
AL Central by a mogambo 16 games and can start printing offs tix anytime they
want. Meanwhile Bud's blind trust
Brewers are 39-72, dead last in the NL Central and just two games better than
Tampa Bay, the official worst major league baseball team on the planet. Need some ketchup, Bud ???
Rest in
peace, Chick Hearn. Say hi to Jack Buck
for us.
See ya
nexted week ...
Robert E Hunt Jr
Copyright ã 2002 by Robert E Hunt Jr. All rights reserved.