For Jenkins, Bottled Up Anger Hits High Mark

Warren Sapp has been blamed for a lot of things, and now Carolina Panther defensive tackle Kris Jenkins says Sapp drove him to excessive drinking.

Jenkins spent most of last season on the injured list because of a shoulder injury and after the Panthers lost to the Oakland Raiders and Sapp on Nov. 7, he said he was so depressed he turned to heavy drinking.

“I hate him,” Jenkins said of Sapp in an Associated Press story. “Everybody says I’m supposed to be polite when I talk to you all, but I hate him.

“He talks too much, he doesn’t make any sense, he’s fat, he’s sloppy, he acts like he’s the best thing since sliced bread. He’s ugly, he stinks, his mouth stinks, his breath stinks, and basically his soul stinks too.

“Not too many people have personalities like that and survive in life. I don’t know how he does it.”

So, Kris, tell us, how do you really feel?

Trivia time: Which former baseball owner stands alone as the winner of a World Series and a Kentucky Derby?

Memorable day: Longtime Times baseball writer Ross Newhan is a part-owner of a race horse, a $20,000 claimer named Commanding Creek. Other owners include twins Jack and Doug Disney, former Angel manager Buck Rodgers and Paul Salata of “Irrelevant Week” fame.

On Memorial Day, Newhan, now retired, was at Boston’s Fenway Park to watch son David of the Baltimore Orioles play against the Red Sox. But first he listened on his cellphone as Commanding Creek, a 9-1 longshot, was involved in a dead-heat victory in the sixth race at Hollywood Park, increasing his earnings to $31,200 after three races.

And then about an hour later, Newhan saw son David hit his first major league grand slam in an 8-1 Oriole victory.

Oops department: It takes five years after retirement for a baseball player to become eligible for the Hall of Fame. But the lineup card given to reporters before a game Thursday between the Orioles and Red Sox had a Hall of Famer leading off for the Orioles. The name listed was Ross Newhan, who went into the Hall as a writer in 2000. The name that should have been listed was David Newhan.

Amazing coincidence: A day after the identify of Deep Throat was revealed, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch got a call saying Richard M. Nixon had made a hole in one on a 125-yard hole at a golf course in Alton, Ill.

Clerk Dennis Cutter double-checked and found that Richard Mark Nixon, born three years after Richard Milhous Nixon had resigned his presidency, had indeed scored a hole in one.

Trivia answer: John Galbreath, whose Pittsburgh Pirates won three World Series. He also owned two Derby winners -- Chateaugay in 1963 and Proud Clarion in 1967.

And finally: Runners in Chicago’s Lakeshore Marathon on Memorial Day may have felt extra tired after the race. That’s because the course was inadvertently laid out a mile too long. One consolation for winner Dan Martin is that his time of 2 hours 50 minutes 24 seconds is surely a world record for a 27.2-mile race.

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Larry Stewart can be reached at [email protected].