The Sunday Column briefly considered sending a dozen roses today to John “Mother” Dunn, the Ravens’ new assistant strength coach (and a former member of the Redskins’ staff), but decided against it for budgetary reasons.
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News item: Running back Rashard Mendenhall, the Steelers’ top draft pick, is robbed at gunpoint by two men while walking along Chicago’s lakefront.
Comment: Come on, guys. You’re supposed to wait until after he gets his signing bonus to rob him. It’s much more lucrative that way.
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I didn’t think this sort of thing happened anymore, but Patriots Pro Bowler Matt Light swears it’s true. “I had never watched an NFL game until I played in one,” he told Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports. “I never watched a college game until I played in one [at Purdue], either.”
Light lived an outdoorsy life as a youth in Greenville, Ohio, a small town of about 13,000 near the Indiana border. “There’s at least somebody in everybody’s family that watched football — except mine,” he said. “Actually, I remember spending Thanksgiving at one of my cousin’s houses, and they were showing games on this little old TV that was easily 30 years old. I mean, it was a relic — it had the UHF dial and the regular dial, the rabbit ears, everything. Instead of watching, we went outside and ran around the whole time.”
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Speaking of the Pats, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette polled its readers after Matt Walsh handed over his long-awaited batch of videotapes to the NFL last week. The question posed by the paper: Now that it has been established that New England taped the Steelers’ defensive signals in the 2001 AFC Championship game, what should be happen next? The results so far:
• Suspend Bill Belichick — 52 percent.
• Make the Patriots a Juneau, Alaska, expansion team — 23 percent.
• Fine the Patriots even more — 12 percent.
• Replay the 2001 AFC title game — 11 percent.
• Let the players call their own signals — 2 percent.
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Replay the game, huh? Hmmm … Wonder what Kordell Stewart is doing these days.
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Fortunately for the Patriots, Walsh submitted no tapes of the Rams’ walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI — nor, thankfully, was there any footage of the Eagles cheerleaders getting dressed.
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This has gotta be the biggest disappointment — considering the media build-up — since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault.
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At this point, I don’t care if the Pats stole one of the traffic signals on Route 1 in Foxborough, Mass. Could we please turn the page?
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I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a laundry detergent commercial in the future of David Whitthoft, the 12-year-old from Connecticut who claims to have worn Brett Favre’s jersey for 1,581 consecutive days.
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It’s hard to believe LeBron James’ .191 shooting percentage (8-for-42) in the first two games of the Celtics series. Heck, that’s what Red Klotz used to shoot against the Globetrotters.
Of course, Red was paid to do it.
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The sight of James’ shots careening off the rim reminded me of a similar nightmare endured by Jerry West in the ’72 Finals. West, who won his only NBA title that year, made just 32.5 percent of his field goal tries against the Knicks, far below his career mark of 47.4. His game-by-game numbers:
• Game 1 — 3-for-15
• Game 2 — 6 for-21
• Game 3 — 10-for-28
• Game 4 — 9-for-25
• Game 5 — 10-for-28
This from a guy who was one of the all-time money players. Going into that season, his 12th in the league, West was averaging 30.9 points a game in the playoffs.
Moral: It can happen to anybody, LeBron, if that makes you feel any better. (Probably not.)
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Turning to college hoops, Karl Hobbs has dismissed two more players from his George Washington basketball team — junior Cheyenne Moore and freshman Miles Beatty. What this means, if I’m not mistaken, is that right now, Hobbs’ sixth man is the school mascot.
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But, hey, at least he’s not costing Karl a scholarship.
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So I’m watching Rick Ankiel throw out two runners at third base in one game — from distant center field, no less — and I’m thinking: If only the Cardinals had moved the pitching rubber back to 200 feet for him.
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Can’t make up my mind which is more laughable:
1. Richie Sexson — he of the .202 batting average — charging the mound the other night.
2. Sexson charging the Mariners $15.5 million for his services this season.
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The Seattle first baseman isn’t just struggling this year. His average was around .200 last year, too (.205). The poor Mariners. They thought they were getting a latter-day Dave Kingman, and they’ve wound up with Mario Mendoza.
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Some will see a correlation between Alex Rodriguez’s fainting when his first daughter was born — disclosed the other day by his wife — and his one homer in his last 59 postseason at bats.
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What’ll they come up with next? A company has begun renting handheld TVs at PGA Tour events that enable fans to see action anywhere on the course. Kangaroo Media, the brains behind the idea, is renting them at the Players Championship for $25 a day, $45 for the weekend and $75 for the week.
And for an extra $10, apparently, you can get live coverage of the 19th hole.
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Did you hear Danica Patrick’s car struck another team’s crew member during practice for the Indianapolis 500? According to a NASCAR spokesman, though, Danica won’t be charged with a flagrant foul because she “refrained from using a throat-slashing gesture.”
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And finally …
A granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II has been selected for Britain’s Olympic team. Zara Phillips, 26, will compete in a demonstration sport, I’m told — crumpet dunking.
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