This Is One Professor With a Mean Streak

Just the stats, man.

Scott Berry, an assistant professor of statistics at Texas A&M;, is predicting that Mark McGwire has a 16% chance of breaking his home run record and that Ken Griffey Jr. has a 57% chance of hitting 50 home runs this season.

For Berry, this is a lifelong hobby.

Berry started making predictions--frequently losing his allowance to his father--when he was a child growing up in Minnesota.

“If George Foster had 30 homers halfway through the season, I thought he’d have 60 by the end of the season,” Berry said. “I’d bet my dad and I’d always lose and I couldn’t figure out [why.]”

What he didn’t know then was there was a statistical formula called “regressing to the mean” . . . a concept that has nothing to do with egocentric baseball owners.

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Trivia time: Who was the first designated hitter?

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Sinking ship: Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post, summing up the Wizards’ massive woes after the firing of Coach Bernie Bickerstaff on Monday:

“They have no center. They’ve got no dependable scoring off the bench. They don’t rebound. They vanish in the fourth quarter. The only way they can win is if Mitch Richmond and Rod Strickland get 50 points.

“They’re the Titanic.

“(Except, thankfully, Celine Dion doesn’t sing the anthem.)”

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Dueling curses: Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe noted that Mo Vaughn has “apparently traded in the Curse of the Bambino for the Curse of the Cowboy.”

How else would you explain the rash of Angel injuries this spring?

“Please. Let’s not talk about curses,” Vaughn told the Globe. “I have to believe everything will be all right. We just have to keep our heads above water until Gary [DiSarcina] comes back.”

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Inside politics: Ilie Nastase is among the candidates running for president of the International Tennis Federation. The campaign certainly should not be as rough and tumble as his first political adventure--running for mayor of Bucharest, Romania.

“In my country, it is hard to be an honest politician,” Nastase told Tennis magazine. “[My opponents] tried to kill me. I don’t mean literally, but they smeared me, making all sorts of threats, accusing me of being secret service.”

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Family ties: The New York Rangers decided to place rookie Manny Malhotra with former Ranger Doug Sulliman and his family in Westchester County, easing his transition to the NHL this season.

Malhotra has the entire third floor to himself.

Good thing.

He snores so loudly that several teammates have abandoned him as a roommate on the road.

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Trivia answer: Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees.

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And finally: Detroit Manager Larry Parrish, on his baserunning strategy: “If you go according to the book, then maybe I wouldn’t run in some situations I do. But I’ve got my own book.”