Keeping Score

While NFL commissioner Roger Goodell revealed that he is taking a pay cut — he’ll give back at least 20 per cent of US$11 million a year — baseball commissioner Bud Selig has been given a raise and now makes $18 million. Noted Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Some say the hardest thing to do in sports is hit a baseball. I say the hardest thing to do is justify Selig’s salary.” . . . One more from Ostler: “Here’s Marshawn Lynch’s cruising checklist: No license plates? Check. Heavily tinted windows? Check. Four reefers and lighter? Check. Loaded 9 mm pistol? Check. No gun registration? Check. Recent guilty plea in incident where you struck a pedestrian and drove away? Check. Fellas, let’s roll! Lynch makes Michael Phelps look like Stephen Hawking.”
Mike Lupica, in the New York Daily News: “Tom Renney was one of the smartest and most decent people I ever met at Madison Square Garden. Now he just becomes the latest guy Glen Sather gets to fire, at the end of a Garden era — Sather’s — that is almost as incredible as Isiah Thomas’s. Just longer. Thomas’s Knicks made it to the first round of the playoffs once. Sather’s Rangers have made the second round twice. Glory days!” . . . Talk show host/comedian Bill Maher, on the touring pilot, Sully Sullenberger: “I’m all for landing planes on rivers when they’re about to go down. But enough. He landed on water; he didn’t walk on it.” . . . Social note: Tori Spelling and husband Dean McDermott have been at a couple of recent Calgary Flames home games, one of which was the Tampa Bay Lightning’s 8-6 victory on Sunday night. McDermott is involved in a movie that is being shot in the Calgary area.
The price of gas went up five cents a litre sometime Thursday. I didn’t realize that this is a long weekend. . . . The highlight of the two-day Blazer Legends celebration was Molly Clovechok’s smile as she talked about the cards, flowers and phone calls that had poured in into their home this week. She and Andy, who isn’t the only legend in that marriage, heard from friends, friends and more friends, and good for them. . . . Mike Bianchi, in the Orlando Sentinel: “Did you see where the economic crisis and resulting budget crunch may mean thousands of prisoners nationwide getting released from jail? You know what that means? More recruits for SEC schools.” . . . Early this week, Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote: “Thanks to Major League Baseball, the World Boxing Council is not the stupidest WBC in creation. The second World Baseball Classic (began) Thursday. I’m not sure why. I guess because there are so many T-shirts, hats and ‘Go, Venezuela!’ banners left from the first ‘Classic’ in 2006 that Bud Selig needed to waste another few weeks of our time to get rid of them. You won’t see much criticism of the WBC on MLB.com or ESPN. On a related note, ESPN and MLB Network will televise all 39 games. They’re leaving the money on Bud’s nightstand.”
In the NFL, quarterback Michael Vick soon will be freed from the big house and will become eligible to play again, and ’tis said the Minnesota Vikings and San Francisco 49ers have experessed interest. “The Niners are offering more money,” writes Greg Cote of the Miami Herald, “but apparently Minnesota is offering to change its nickname to Vickings.” . . . One more from Cote: “The World Baseball Classic almost is here. It’s like the NFL Pro Bowl. One of those things you’re honored to be in but would rather didn’t exist.” . . . A note from The Sports Curmudgeon over at sportscurmudgeon.com: “The Washington Redskins laid off a couple of dozen team employees around the Christmas holidays. The Washington Redskins just committed approximately US$65 million in guaranteed payments to two players. I must be missing something here.”
Through a promotion with Scotiabank — the Celebration of Hockey Tour — the Stanley Cup will be in Vernon on March 14. Lord Stanley’s mug will be at the Scotiabank Vernon Branch, 3213 30th Ave., from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. If you’re a fan, take your family for photos. You might even get to meet Marty Stein, a local Detroit scout and regular visitor to Interior Savings Centre who has three Stanley Cup rings through his work with the Red Wings. . . . You may have noticed Mark Recchi is wearing No. 28 with his new team, the Boston Bruins. He couldn’t wear his familiar No. 8 because it is retired in honour of Cam Neely. Recchi wore No. 18 with the Carolina Hurricanes on their Stanley Cup run three years ago. He also wore No. 28 in his first season as a pro. He won the IHL championship that season, 1988-89, with the Muskegon Lumberjacks so, as he told me Thursday, “Why not try it again?”
It was Tobacco-Free Florida Week, which is why there were two skeletons flapping in the breeze behind home plate at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., on Sunday. Or, as the Miami Herald’s Cote put it: “Look closely. They could be supermodels.” . . . Dan Daly, in the Washington Times: “Don’t know what to make of Pacman Jones’ latest venture, a role in the upcoming reality TV show Pros vs. Joes 4: All-Stars. For one thing, having seen Jones play for the Cowboys last year, I’m not sure if he should be a Pro or a Joe.” . . . Cam Hutchinson, in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, after a topless coffee shop opened in Vassalboro, Maine: “You’ll never see this in our country. In Canada, the popular Roll Up the Rim promotion at Tim Hortons is as exciting as it gets; in Vassalboro, you buy one cup and get two on the house.”
Shaq may be 37 years of age but he still put 45 on the Toronto Raptors the other night. “I’m the only player,” he told the Associated Press, “who looks at each and every centre and says to myself, ‘That’s barbecued chicken down there.’ ” . . . Outfielder Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers has decided to stop using smokeless tobacco. As he told the Dallas Morning News: “You know it’s bad when your three-year-old holds up a water bottle and asks if daddy spit in this before she drinks out of it.” . . . Johnny (Red) Kerr, a former NBA player, coach and broadcaster, died last week at 76. Looking back at his playing days, he once told the Chicago Tribune: “We’d get on the train with a couple six packs, and after a while, our coach said, ‘Hey, you guys can only have two cans of beer on the trip.’ So, that’s when I found Fosters and the 40-ounce can.”

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