Keeping Score

It sounds as though Chicago White Sox general manager Ken Williams won't be shopping for any high-end free agents. As he puts it: “You can’t offer a guy a dollar if you’ve only got 50 cents.” . . . That being the case, one must assume that the White Sox are out of the running for Manny Ramirez. . . . ManRam, of course, has yet to decide where he’ll play in 2009. Janice Hough, the Left Coast Sports Babe, claims: “Even Brett Favre is saying ‘Dude, make up your mind.’ ” . . . Here’s Detroit Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock, commenting on NHL referees: “I just know there’s lots of nights our guys are going to the box and I can’t understand why. The one thing I do know, it’s kind of like your wife. The people in black and white, they’re always right, just like your wife.” . . . Did you thank big oil for lowering the price of gasoline after they had it as high as 99.9 cents a litre? That’s what I thought.

John Paddock, who felt the sting of the axe with the Ottawa Senators last season, thinks he knows who will be the next to get it. “I think now he’s next in line,” Paddock told the Camden, N.J., Courier-Post in reference to GM Bryan Murray. “We were 14 games over .500 when I was fired. They're (five) under now. Somebody needs to take responsibility for that. Whether the coaches he hired and fired were good or not, they’re his players and they’re either not playing good or can’t play, one or the other.” . . . Paddock now is head coach of the AHL’s Philadelphia Phantoms. . . . Tori Spence, one of the River City Racers, is in the chase for a prize worth more than $25,000. It’s all part of a contest that involves a video she made. Scoot on over to www.INGSpeedSkatingChallenge.com, check out the terrific video and then vote.

Well, it turns out he truly is A-Fraud. Alex Rodriguez was going to save baseball from the spectre of Barry Bonds but it turns out that Rodriguez is just like all the rest of them. And for true fans of what once was America’s game it turns out there really is crying in baseball. . . . Can there be any doubt now that Bud Selig’s legacy will be that of Steroid Commissioner? . . . You realize, of course, that in 2007 Selig was the fourth-highest paid person in Major League Baseball. Only Jason Giambi, Rodriguez and Derek Jeter were better paid, although a whole lot of people had better seasons. . . . Ray Ratto, in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Nobody within the baseball establishment is to be trusted on this issue. Ever, in any context. Not Bud Selig or his 30 bosses. Not Don Fehr or the union hierarchy. Not the players, not the media, nobody. Everything you know, you don’t, because everything someone else tells you they know, they don’t either. They’re either ignorant, dishonest, out of the loop or all three.” . . . Mike Vaccaro, in the New York Post: “The fact is, what we already knew was that the whole 15-year era deserves its own asterisk. And what we keep finding out only stamps that asterisk bolder and darker and deeper. Alex Rodriguez? If Sports Illustrated’s story is true . . . all that does is wrap the whole era into a neat bow.”

Baseball, by the way, isn’t alone. Sumo wresting in Japan is in the middle of an on-going drug scandal, with some competitors having tested positive for marijuana and four of them having been suspended for six months. According to Cam Hutchinson of the Saskatoon StarPhoenix: “When asked what they were planning to do, the banished wrestlers said they would try out for the American swimming team.” . . . After that photo of Michael Phelps was published, you were waiting to hear from Cheech and Chong, weren’t you? Well, here’s what Tommy Chong had to say to TMZ.com: “I think he’s done it before. He’s got good lung capacity. Can you imagine the lung capacity that guy’s got? Aw man, he can suck down a kilo without even thinking about it.” . . . I’m sorry, but when a hockey team has a 26-26-1-4 record, it means it has won 26 games and lost 31 and that isn’t .500.

Gary Loewen of the Toronto Sun knows baseball season is near because “next week, pitchers and catchers and pharmacists report.” . . . Ian Hamilton, in the Regina Leader-Post: “The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that high school cheerleading is a contact sport, meaning participants can’t be sued for accidentally causing injuries to others. Injured cheerleaders looking to launch lawsuits reacted by saying they were getting a rah-rah deal. . . . Jilted cheerleaders also will have to stick to their current mode of making money — pyramid schemes.” . . . Xinhua News Agency in China has reported that the Bird’s Nest, the 91,000-seat Olympic Stadium in Beijing that cost US$450 million to build, is sitting empty and needs $8.8 million a year to maintain it. . . . “Who could’ve guessed,” scribbled Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times, “the nesting bird in question would be an albatross?” . . . Sarah Palin — remember her? — has told Esquire magazine that she named a daughter Bristol after the home city of ESPN. “Thank gawd,” says Tony Kornheiser of the ESPN show PTI, “that ESPN is not in Santa Claus, Indiana.”

Scott Ostler, in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Among the revelations in the new book about the Yankees, co-authored by Joe Torre: Madonna and A-Rod fought when she asked him if they could adopt Derek Jeter. . . . A-Rod wanted the team to switch to horizontal pinstripes, to make his chest look broader. . . . Pitchers relieving David Wells frequently complained that he had eaten the resin bag.” . . . According to Elliott Harris of the Chicago Sun-Times, Bobby Hull was at a banquet talking about growing up as one of 11 children. And what was that like? “I never slept alone till I got married,” Hull told the crowd. . . . They held a ceremony in Clarksville, Tenn., last week as Austin Peay University saluted former basketball star Fly Williams. Which meant, noted Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Fans got to reprise the old chant: ‘Fly’s open, let’s go Peay.’ ”

Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca and gdrinnan.blogspot.com. Keeping Score appears Saturdays.