Don’t Expect Boo-Hoos if You Boo Him

Bill Lyon in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “You want a ready-made villain? Reggie Miller knows the part by heart. He can out-woof a whole pack and talk trash till it’s piled higher than a garbage strike.

“Miller is his own brand of deli meat, somewhere between ham and hot dog.

“You tried to put a face on the Orlando Magic, and it always turned out to belong to Penny Hardaway. Mostly it was a face that said, ‘Don’t give me the ball, please.’ . . . He all but swooned when booed in Philadelphia.

“But Reggie Miller embraces the role of villain as eagerly as Hardaway was cowed by it. Perversely, Miller seems to luxuriate in venom.�

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Trivia time: Who was the first L.A. Dodger to hit an inside-the-park home run?

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Bo speak: Brian O’Neill in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Bruce Keidan in a 1993 column lamenting the third person athlete-speak, noted that Bobby Bonilla would sometimes talk about ‘Bobby Bo’ and other times ‘Bobby Bonilla,’ leading one to wonder if he thought of them as separate and distinct identities.

“Keidan didn’t know, but he did know that ‘Lou Gehrig would have been hooted right out of the Bronx if he had said in parting, ‘Today, Lou Gehrig considers himself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.’ �

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Clever: Among the runners last Sunday at the annual Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco was a man dressed as the “Phantom of the Opera Menace.�

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Frustration: Before the start of a series in Cleveland, the Indians’ Roberto Alomar and the Orioles’ Brady Anderson got together.

“We were talking tennis,� Anderson said. “We asked each other how come our girlfriends can’t beat Venus Williams.�

Anderson’s girlfriend is Amanda Coetzer of South Africa and Alomar is engaged to Mary Pierce of France.

Children, behave: Bob Smizik in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Since it has been reported Pirate players were using laser pointers on the bench to shine in the eyes of photographers, it’s clear one thing is missing from the Pirates’ bench: a kindergarten teacher.�

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FYI: The Lakers trail the San Antonio Spurs, 2-0, in their NBA playoff series. But they were in a deeper hole in the 1970 playoffs when they trailed the Phoenix Suns, three games to one.

The Lakers, however, rallied to win the series, routing the Suns, 129-94, in the seventh game.

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Trivia answer: Joe Pignatano, on June 18, 1958, at Philadelphia.

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And finally: Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times has some fish stories. A sampling:

“I was a kid, and my buddy and I were bass fishing in a boat with his cigar-smoking dad at a strip mine near Canton, Ill. My buddy’s dad had his lure in the water, and was preparing to put a minnow on another hook.

“He had his cigar in one hand, the minnow in another, and then a fish hit his line. Before he reached for the pole, my buddy’s dad threw his cigar into the bait bucket and stuck the minnow in his mouth.�