After dinner on Monday night, I told my long-suffering wife that I was going to watch the Redskins and the Broncos in the Hall of Fame Game. She recognized the word “Redskins” and immediately associated it with football and expressed shock that it was football season. I told her that the exhibition games had begun. She said, “See you in February.” And all this time I thought she didn't follow sports. She knew about the Redskins and she knew that football season went through January. Maybe she secretly reads these rants on the website? Nah…

I don't know if you have seen any of the “Sports Center Old School” episodes on ESPN this week. For a week they are bringing back some of the people who were SportsCenter anchors “back in the day”. Lots of old clips and lots of chitchat about what ESPN was like in the early 1980s. Craig Kilborn and Charlie Steiner and Gayle Gardner have been on so far but Keith Olbermann is not going to be on the list because he was not invited back. ESPN programming guru, Mark Shapiro, said that Olbermann's less than generous comments about ABC's hiring of Lisa Guerrero for MNF last year was the reason. Excuse me? If even a tenth of the stories are true about the break-up between Olbermann and ESPN and about the behind the scenes sniping between the two of them over the years, the Lisa Guerrero “thing” has to be a nit on the warp and woof of the universe. Someone said that Olbermann did not burn the bridge back to ESPN; rather, he nuked it and then covered the chasm with biological warfare agents and then planted mines on the road leading into the chasm.

That's too bad because in terms of entertainment value Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann were the best pair of anchors ever to sit in those chairs. The suits at ESPN/ABC/Disney could never bring themselves to deal with that and invite such a pariah back to their set, but it's a fact.

I have advised – no, I have begged – you never to wager on things like NFL exhibition games or spring training baseball. Ray Ratto had a column in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle that makes the same point very strongly. I commend it to your reading, here is the opening to whet our appetite:

“The Raiders and the 49ers play each other Saturday night to open their new and exciting exhibition seasons, and if it helps you at all, the Raiders are giving 1½ despite the fact that Dennis Erickson is 14-8 against the line in exhibition games in his career.

“Now there's a hellish thought for you.

“Not that Dennis Erickson is 14-8 against the spread in games that don't count, but that someone (a) keeps track of this, (b) thinks it says something important even if it is about something unimportant, and (c) believes it is information worth sharing with others.”

There was another really good line in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle from Tom FitzGerald's column. Someone observed a tee shirt on one of the “five hour runners” in The Chronicle Marathon with this inscription stenciled on the back:

“BALCO Placebo Group”

I don't pretend to understand all the machinations involved with this next item, but it is clear that Jerry Colangelo is being forced out of his position as CEO of the Arizona Diamondbacks. He is gonzo on 1 January and his replacement has been named. That would be Jeff Moorad who is one of the uber-agents who represents a lot of top-drawer players in baseball such as Manny Ramirez. Talk about a person having to look at the world from the other end of the universe. Moorad made his name and his fortune by convincing GMs that his clients were the next incarnation of Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays and/or Mike Schmidt. Now he will have people try to tell him that and he will have to say that the players in question remind him more of Dave Kingman, Humberto Robinson, Bobby Del Greco and/or Billy Ripken. [Aside: In the spirit of ESPN's Sports Center Old School, I decided to do some “old school” references here.]

Earlier this week, Kent Desormeaux was inducted into the horseracing Hall of Fame. Desormeaux still holds the record for most races won in a year with 598 back in 1989. He won most of those races on the Maryland circuit that year so I was able to follow it closely. In a quest to reach 600 wins in the year, he would travel to Philly Park on Laurel's dark days and ride there; yes, he did boot home a few winners there too. He fell short of 600 because of snow days on the east coast in December of 1989, which cost him about 4 or 5 days of racing. But it is still a record and he belongs in the Hall of Fame. One other inductee was a horse named Bowl of Flowers, which went in as part of the “ancient horse” category. My paleontologist son has dug for fossils of ancient horses in Wyoming but I suspect that Bowl of Flowers is not one of those. Rather I think that “ancient horse” is a euphemism for “glue”.

First, there were reports that Roger Clemens had been kicked out of a youth baseball game for spitting seeds on an umpire when he disputed a call in the game. Then there was a denial and then there was a clarification and so on. Whatever. Here is the thing that has been only briefly touched upon:

Whatever happened occurred at a game in which Clemens son was playing as part of a national tournament for 10-and-under baseball teams.

Why are there national tournaments for 10-and-under anythings?

With the WNBA now in hiatus as they make way for their players to compete in the Olympics, we might consider the implications of the following “equation”:

WNBA = Wow, No Bothersome Audiences

Finally, here is a good line from Jerry Greene in the Orlando Sentinel:

“Closing thought: The NCAA forbids schools from luring prep athletes with underage drinking, drugs, gambling and meeting strippers. From now on the athletes will have to do what all guys do: Wait until they get into a frat.”

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

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