This Brand of Fumble Gives a Coach More Than Gray Hair

After Dale Jarrett crashed Joe Gibbs’ Chevrolet Lumina stock car during a qualifying race for the Daytona 500, he was apprehensive about what the Washington Redskin coach might have to say.

“The only thing Joe said was that each man’s winning share of the Super Bowl was $36,000, and I cost him that much in one race,� Jarrett said.

Add Redskins: Mark Rypien, the Redskins’ Super Bowl most valuable player, was also at Daytona, but not with Gibbs. He was in the pits as a crew member of Chad Little’s team. Little and Rypien were high school football rivals in the state of Washington. Rypien did not go over the wall to service Little’s car when it came in for fuel and tires, however.

“I’m not crazy,� Rypien said. “Those cars are going fast when they come into the pits, and I don’t want to be anywhere near them.�

Trivia time: Who is the only person to win both the national motorcycle and automobile driving championships?

Career change: PGA touring pro Neal Lancaster played baseball and golf in high school in North Carolina. Here’s why he choose golf:

“I was a pitcher. I had just struck out one guy, and the first baseman hit me in the head with the throw back. I walked straight to the dugout. The next day I was on the golf course.�

In perspective: Jim Turner of the Jupiter (Fla.) Courier says of the Winter Olympics that Americans watched “to see people they never heard of, from countries they have never heard of, who have spent their entire lives training in sports they have never heard of, finish 13th.�

That’s baseball: Reggie Jackson was trying to explain hitting. “Look at it this way,� Jackson said. “When you play this game 10 years, go to bat 7,000 times and get 2,000 hits, you know what that means? That you’ve gone 0 for 5,000.�

Turnabout is fair play: Chi Chi Rodriguez, defending champion in next week’s GTE West Senior Classic at Ojai Valley, commenting to Miller Barber as they prepared to tee off during a round with Lee Trevino: “How does it feel to be a minority in this threesome?�

Matter of opinion: Jose Maria Olazabal was not impressed by a streaker during the British Open. “It was only a naked woman,� the Spaniard said.

What’s cooking, Ian? One of the duties of Masters champions is to select the menu for the annual Champion’s Cup dinner at Augusta. Ian Woosnam’s choices might include such Welsh delicacies as Sewin (sea trout), Enllyn Bara Lawr ac Oen Cymreig (lamb and seaweed roll) and Lloyd George Pudding (lemon curd and custard).

All of that probably would be preferable to the haggis (meat pudding cooked in the stomach lining of a sheep or calf) served up by Sandy Lyle in 1989.

Macho sport: Christine Brennan of the Washington Post, talking about figure skaters, said: “This is a sport where you talk about sequins, earrings and plunging necklines--and you’re talking about the men.�

Trivia answer: Joe Leonard, motorcycles in 1954, 1956 and 1957, and Indy cars in 1971 and 1972.

Class system: Bill Mullins, an independent, low-budget top-fuel drag racer, illustrated his point about the difficulty of facing big-money drivers such as Joe Amato and Kenny Bernstein when he said: “It’s hard to fight them with spitballs when they’ve got rocket launchers.�

Quotebook: Senior golfer Jimmy Powell, on switching between a long and short putter during a tournament: “I’m just trying to make one jealous of the other.�