To Him, This President Was Simply a Trader

When the Chicago White Sox visited the White House recently, notably absent was Harold Baines, who heard President Bush, the former Texas Ranger owner, say frequently during the election campaign that the worst decision he made was trading Sammy Sosa for Baines.

“Why would I want to go visit him?� Baines asked the Chicago Tribune’s Paul Sullivan. “I sure didn’t vote for him.�

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Trivia time: What is the major league record for being caught stealing in a game?

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Frustrating: Two-time champion Terry Labonte is the only driver who has competed in every Winston Cup race this season but has yet to lead a lap.

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Together again: Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca will be linked together as long as baseball is played. It was Branca who served the pitch that Thomson hit for “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World� when the New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a 1951 National League pennant playoff.

For the 50th anniversary of that game, the two will be NL co-captains in the July 10 All-Star game in Seattle.

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All in the family: Drag racing champion John Force’s daughter, Ashley, 18, has received her license from the NHRA to race Super Comp dragsters.

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What’s next? Damir Dokic can’t win for winning.

The controversial father of tennis star Jelena Dokic, who smashed a journalist’s cell phone during Wimbledon last year, was banned by the WTA for six months for arguing about the price of salmon at the U.S. Open. He was also ejected from a tournament in England after calling officials “Nazis.�

This time his indiscretion was lighting up a victory smoke at Wimbledon to celebrate Jelena’s win over Rossana de los Rios. As he began lighting his pipe, a security official told him he must go elsewhere.

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Different strokes: Van Meter, Iowa, first gained fame as the home of Bob Feller, who came out of high school to become the Cleveland Indians’ strikeout king.

Now Van Meter holds another distinction. Van Meter and Martensdale-St. Mary’s tied a 73-year-old national high school record with 16 home runs in a game. Van Meter won, 17-15, as 12 players homered.

The first time it happened, Atlantic (Iowa) beat Griswold, 109-0, in 1928.

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How about an asterisk? Tom Witkosky of the Des Moines Register noted that “Oklahoma’s national championship football team would have been banned from postseason play because of low graduation rates under guidelines proposed by [the Knight Foundation’s Commission] pushing for reform of collegiate athletics.

“In addition, half of the Elite Eight in the NCAA’s men’s basketball tournament last season wouldn’t have been eligible for tournament play.�

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Quotable: From ESPN’s Dick Schaap, as reported by Rudy Martzke in USA Today:

“If Cleveland survived both George Steinbrenner and Don King, it can survive John Rocker.�

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Looking back: On this day in 1929, Bobby Jones beat Al Espinosa by 23 strokes in a playoff, 141-164, to win the U.S. Open at Winged Foot.

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Trivia answer: Four, by San Francisco’s Robby Thompson in a Giants’ 7-6, 12-inning victory over Cincinnati in 1986. Catcher Bo Diaz threw out Thompson in the fourth, sixth, ninth and 11th innings.

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And finally: If you thought Labonte was having a tough streak, consider Mike Skinner, who has driven in 160 Winston Cup races without a victory.

“The joke is that might explain why Skinner has been driven to drinking,� wrote Dave Albee in the Marin Independence Journal.

Skinner has a 1,200 bottle wine cellar at his home in Spruce Creek, Fla., an airport community near Daytona Beach, and he has plans to expand it to 2,500 bottles.

And he named his pet dog Opus One, after one of Napa Valley’s premier wines.