Keeping Score

In case you aren’t aware, we’re into March Madness, and it seems there are some doctors out there who are really busy at this time of year. It seems this is a favourite time for men to schedule vasectomies. As Dr. J. Stephen Jones of Cleveland Clinic’s Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute told the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “I’m booked up. My schedule on that part of the month filled up very quickly. It filled up ahead of time. If they’re going to have a day off, it might as well be on a day when they would want to be watching basketball, as opposed to watching Oprah.” . . . As Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times put it: “Talk about being unseeded for the NCAA tournament.” . . . Jim Schwartz — you know, Jim Schwartz, the head coach of the Detroit Lions — has decreed that none of his players shall be allowed to speak with members of the media without approval from team officials. For which members of the Detroit media are giving thanks.
If the young men who perform in the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League were animals, the SPCA would be screaming about the way they are being treated. . . . When Sicamous opened a series in Kamloops on Sunday it was the Eagle’s sixth game in seven nights. Oh, did we mention that it also was their 16th game in 20 nights. . . . And every playoff team in the KIJHL is able to provide similar numbers. . . . If this were the U.S., someone would demand a Congressional investigation. . . . Mike Lupica, in the New York Daily News: “Mrs. Madoff, who just happened to put $10 million under the mattress before the feds came knocking on her door, maybe ought to think about a summer job.” . . . One more from Lupica: “After the two Mafia cops got put away for good last week, I went back and re-read Jimmy Breslin’s book about them, called The Good Rat. And it is even better than I remembered.” . . . Lupica is correct about that book. It’s Breslin at his best.
The WHL’s Chilliwack Bruins fired a good coach this week when they dumped Jim Hiller. He won’t have trouble finding work once hockey’s silly season hits high gear. . . . When Chilliwack GM Darryl Porter starts searching for a replacement, you have to wonder if he’ll give former Kamloops Blazers head coach Dean Clark a call. Clark has been out of the coaching racket for almost two seasons now. . . . Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on the World Baseball Classic and the injuries to the U.S. team: “So far, nobody has lost a major organ. Just interest. The good news is that fans in Venezuela think this is really cool and T-shirt sales are going well in the Netherlands. Of all of baseball’s dumb creations, this one ranks second only to Bud Selig, but slightly ahead of the designated hitter.”
Scott Ostler, in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Brian McNamee claims he played Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Roger in the Yankees’ hot-tub area. Memo to McNamee and (Roger) Clemens: Get a room! Imagine the embarrassment had Alex Rodriguez walked in on them. Awkward!” . . . Ian Hamilton, in the Regina Leader-Post: “According to some media reports, former NFL running back Travis Henry is celebrating the recent birth of twins — giving him 11 children by 10 different mothers. Man, the guy gets more action than Jack Bauer. . . . With a roster of 11, Henry can now officially apply for an NFL expansion franchise. He needs one more kid to get into the CFL.” . . . Gisele Bundchen and her husband, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, spent time last weekend visiting her family in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Local TV apparently tried to cut a deal with them on a reality show called The Brady Bundchen.
Richard Williams, the 67-year-old father of tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams, is soon to marry his 30-year-old girlfriend. Noted Len Berman of NBC-TV: “Did somebody say Woody Allen movie?” . . . If you’ve been watching the World Baseball Classic, perhaps you’ve seen Bong Jung-Keun pitch for South Korea. . . . Yes, Michael Phelps could get a hit off him. . . . Headline at Fark.com: “Federer to be a fatherer.” . . . Cam Hutchinson, in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix: “I have a question: Do the same teams compete at the Tim Hortons Brier year after year because they are the best, or because they are the only ones still curling?” . . . Steve Simmons, in the Toronto Sun: “Word around is that the two wacky owners of the (Tampa Bay) Lightning, Oren Koules and Len Barrie, are no longer on speaking terms.”
Veteran pitcher Juan Tavarez signed a minor-league deal with the Washington Nationals and then explained himself to the Washington Post: “Why did I sign with the Nationals? When you go to a club at 4 in the morning, and you’re just waiting, waiting, a 600-pounder looks like J.Lo. And to me this is Jennifer Lopez right here. It’s 4 in the morning. Too much to drink. So, Nationals: Jennifer Lopez to me.” . . . In a conversation with Cory Wolfe of the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, former Montreal Expos pitcher Steve Rogers recalled one injury suffered by Bill (Spaceman) Lee: “He had a hip-pointer so bad and when you rupture the blood vessels on the crown of your hip, it can bleed into the tissue in your inner thigh. In this case, it was so bad that it bled into his other thigh. I don’t know if you want to write this, but they also had to drain his scrotum twice. It was all because he was climbing up the natural stone face of his girlfriend’s house to tell her not to come over because his wife was coming into town that night, unexpectedly. His foot slipped and he landed on a wrought iron railing on his hip.” . . . The WHL’s coach of the year will be either Don Hay of the Vancouver Giants or Lorne Molleken of the Saskatoon Blades. It is interesting that they were teammates with the Philadelphia Firebirds of the now-defunct North American League in 1976-77. The Firebirds’ head coach? The legendary Gregg Pilling.
Headline at SportsPickle.com: “A-Rod leaves Madonna for 50-year-old Barbie.” . . . Third baseman Chipper Jones, chatting with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about his days with Team USA at the World Baseball Classic in Toronto: “Just way too many days off. We stayed in Toronto for a week and played three games. I don’t know if you ever stayed in Toronto, but it’s not exactly Las Vegas. To say that we were plucking our eyebrows out one at a time would be an understatement.” . . . By now you’ve likely heard about the 62-year-old Florida woman who took a couple of golf lessons and then aced the first hole she played. As NBC-TV’s Jimmy Fallon said: “She said she didn’t even know she had done anything special until her husband started to strangle her.”

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