But, Coach, We’re Going to Watch Game Films
The economic woes currently plaguing Argentina have had some odd side-effects, not least of all at Almirante Brown, a struggling second-division soccer team in Buenos Aires.
In wealthier times, the club used to house its players in a decent hotel whenever they had two-a-day training sessions. Now, they go to a less salubrious spot where the rooms rent by the hour.
According to Ole, a sports newspaper, the 11 rooms reserved for the 22 players feature mirrors on the ceiling and a few even have Jacuzzis.
Coach Fernando Zamacola drew the line at some things, however.
“The first thing we asked the owner to do,†he said, “was to cut the cable television and remove the video recorders from the rooms in case some of the players prefer to watch pornographic videos instead of sleeping.â€
No rest for the wicked?
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Trivia time: Which racehorse is considered the greatest of the 20th century?
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Not model behavior: Chris Webber’s contract is worth $18 million a year, but it’s his relationship with model Tyra Banks that recently was the subject of a newspaper column in Sacramento.
Webber blasted the media for covering his personal life.
“He may not like the attention, but it’s part of the deal,†said the Sacramento Bee’s J. Freedom du Lac, who wrote the column that got Webber steamed.
“If Tyra Banks were dating a newspaper delivery boy in Sacramento, it would be an interesting topic.
“That she’s hanging out with the most famous person in town ... that makes it an issue.â€
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The optimist: David Samson, new president of the Florida Marlins, recently purchased by his father-in-law Jeffrey Loria for $158.5 million, isn’t counting on getting the money back any time soon.
“Our business plan calls for heavy, heavy losses that we know we have to sustain,†Samson said.
That’s some plan.
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Wayward flight: Tiger Woods said he had a good reason for not taking part in last year’s Accenture Match Play Championship in Australia after losing to Darren Clarke in the final at La Costa the year before.
“There’s always the chance of getting the boot pretty quick [in match play],†Woods said on his official Web site. “I’d hate to fly all that way, get smoked the first day and have to come home.â€
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Oddballs: There’s a special kind of person who goes to the ballpark in these very early days of spring training, according to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Ray Ratto.
“They tend to be baseball fans who cannot reconcile the high salaries, the threat of lockouts and contraction, and the other rampant stupidities of the major-league game with their own beliefs,†Ratto wrote.
“They like the game simple and pure, unmarked by greed, duplicity and all-around reptilian behavior, even though they know that the [unheralded] players they romanticize ... want nothing more than to become part of that major league world that discomfits them so.â€
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Trivia answer: No, not Secretariat. According to Blood-Horse magazine, it was Man o’War.
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And finally: From the Chicago Sun-Times’ Ron Rapoport: “Now that’s what I call a Daytona 500. A great race, a couple of crashes, a guy caught cheating at the end and everybody lives to tell about it.â€
Grahame L. Jones
